Flora Unveiled

The Two-Sex Model j 327

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for the purification of sap by the “flower” with the medieval identification of menstrual

blood as impurities. In the following passage, he considers two theories— either the sepals,

petals, and stamens manufacture a refined sap that flows toward the uterus, or they remove

impurities from the sap that rises from the roots and then transport the purified sap back

toward the uterus:

Meanwhile I have wondered if the leaves [petals] of flowers produce sap in their sacks

[cells] which, flowing inside, they pour by the soft uterus and the immature seed, as

I  have plausibly concluded about the remaining leaves [sepals?] of the flower stalk.

However, for some time I have rather believed that the role of leaves [petals, stamens,

and sepals] consists in the purification of the unfit humors.^11

Malpighi clearly favors the latter hypothesis, whereby the stamens, petals, and sepals

remove impurities from the sap.^12

According to Malpighi, once the sap has been purified by the stamens and other floral

structures, it is transported rapidly back to the uterus. His description of this process is

novel and strangely erotic:

The self- contained purer fluid of the flower stalk can be brought back by a frantic

discharge, so that it rushes more easily and more purely into the uterus.^13

A modern reader could be forgiven for interpreting “frantic discharge” as a plant orgasm,

especially in the context of a fluid that “rushes ... into the uterus.” However, there is no evi-

dence that Malpighi thought of this process in sexual terms— or at least not consciously. It

seems more likely that he was envisioning a pump- like mechanism that forced the purified

sap from the sepals, petals, and stamens toward the uterus. Such an interpretation would

be consistent with Malpighi’s own research on the role of the multichambered heart in the

circulation of the blood and on the contractions of the spleen, which forces lymphatic fluid

into the vessels.

Malpighi’s description of the “frantic discharge” of purified sap from the flower into the

“uterus” is reminiscent of Descartes’s theory of the physiology of love outlined in his book,

The Passions of the Soul.^14 According to Descartes, the mere sight of a loved one forces a

denser, cruder type of blood into the heart, displacing the more rarefied blood that has

already passed through the heart multiple times. The less refined blood causes the heart, the

seat of the soul, to send a signal to the brain compelling it to desire the love object. Although

in Malpighi’s model of the flower it is the refined sap from the sepals, petals, and stamens

that displaces the cruder sap from the roots, the basic mechanisms both involve the explo-

sive movement of humors. It’s possible that Malpighi consciously or unconsciously associ-

ated the mechanism of fertilization in flowers with Descartes’s theory of passion.

Consistent with a human sexual analogy for fertilization in plants, Malpighi compared

menstruation in flowers to the events preceding “the moments of conception” in women:

Hence it is right to consider that nature through these structures [sepals, petals, and

stamens] is eliminating, as if it were mucus matter, most of the humor, which is of a