Flora Unveiled

330 i Flora Unveiled

In this passage, Grew compares flowers to proper ladies, whose sepals act like a bod-
ice, enabling them to maintain decorum by restraining their “Parts.” The potential for
“uncouth” sexuality is explicitly suggested.^17
In 1676, five years after the preceding passage was written, Grew presented a second lec-
ture on the flower that included a significant modification of his metaphor of the calyx as
a bodice. Rather than emphasizing the calyx’s tightness in restraining the internal parts of
the flowers, Grew now stressed the calyx’s ability to slacken during the swelling of the fruit,
which he compared to pregnancy:

they [the sepals] are aptly designed, not only to protect the Leaves [petals] of the

Flower in the Bud; and after their Expansion, to keep them tite: but also, by receding,

Bredways, one from another, and so making a greater Circle, gradually to give way fore

the full Growth and safe spreading of the Attire [stamens]. Which, in regard it consists

of Parts exquisitely tender, were it pinched up too close, would be killed or spoiled

before it came to the Birth. As Teeming Women gradually slaken their Laces ...^18

Here we have two clear examples of the flower as a female projective system, first as the
nubile young woman exhibiting her charms to best advantage, and second as a pregnant
woman swelling to form a fruit. The crucial question is, why did Grew alter his metaphor?
What had happened in the intervening five years to inspire Grew to change his 1671 trope
for the calyx from a corset to a maternity dress?

Nehemiah Grew’s Transsexual Attire

“We next proceed to the Flower. The Parts whereof are most commonly three:  the
Empalement, the Foliation, and the Attire.” So begins Grew’s 1676 lecture on flowers, pub-
lished in Book I, Chapter V of The Anatomy of Plants, the definitive compilation of his
botanical papers published in 1682. As noted, the term “empalement” was Grew’s idio-
syncratic name for the calyx, whereas “foliature” was the term already in use for petals.
Grew also invented the curious moniker “attire “ for the frilly structures, mostly stamens,
which were attached above the corolla. The term may be derived from a passage in Milton’s
Lycidas, written in 1637:^19

Bring the rathe [early blooming] Primrose that forsaken dies.

The tufted Crow- toe [wild hyacinth], and the pale Gessamine [jasmine], The white

Pink, and the Pansie freakt with jeat [black coal], The glowing violet.

The Musk- rose, and the well attir’d Woodbine [honeysuckle].

In turn, Milton’s metaphor “well attir’d” may have been inspired by the famous passage
about lilies in the New Testament (Matthew 6:28– 30):

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

And yet I  say to you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one

of these.