ALPINI, PROSPERO, or PROSPER ALPINUS (1553-1617), Italian physician and botanist, was born at Marostica, in the republic of Venice. During a three years' residence in Egypt as physician to the Italian consul in Cairo he studied the palm tree, and he seems to have deduced the doctrine of the sexual difference of plants, which was adopted as the foundation of the Linnaean system. He says that "the female date-trees or palms do not bear fruit unless the branches of the male and female plants are mixed together; or, as is generally done, unless the dust found in the male sheath or male flowers is sprinkled over the female flowers." In 1593 he was appointed professor of botany at Padua. He was succeeded in the botanical chair by his son Alpino Alpini (d. 1637). His best-known work is De Plantis Aegypti liber (Venice, 1592). His De Medicine Egyptiorum (Venice, 1591) is said to contain the first account of the coffee plant published in Europe.