Flora Unveiled

344 i Flora Unveiled

In the vegetable kingdom, no production of seeds, the most perfect gift of nature,

the general means for the maintenance of the species, takes place, unless the anthers

have prepared beforehand the young plant contained in the seed. It appears, therefore,

justifiable to give these anthers a nobler name and to ascribe to them the significance

of male sexual organs, since they are the receptacles in which the “seed” itself, that

is that “dust” which is the most subtle part of the plant, is secreted and collected,

and from which it is later distributed. ... It is equally evident that the ovary with

its style represents the female sexual organ of the plant, which must provide, with all

its strength, a mother’s support for her new- born fetus, which she conceives and for

which she cares.^60

Camerarius was adamant that plant sex should no longer be considered a metaphor or
figure of speech, but was literally true. Thus, in the case of monoecious and dioecious plants:

They behave indeed to each other as male and female, and are otherwise not different

from one another. They are thus distinguished with respect to sex, and this is not to

be understood as it is ordinarily done, as a sort of comparison, analogy, or figure of

speech, but is to be taken actually and literally as such.^61 ,62

When citing Malpighi and Grew’s contributions in his introduction, Camerarius
largely ignored both the former’s elaborate menstruation model and the latter’s trans-
sexual theory of the stamen. As a relatively obscure young physician from a provincial
German town, Camerarius may have felt freer than his more distinguished and well-
connected European colleagues to jettison the ancient one- sex model. On the other
hand, Camerarius did not make a complete break with the past. He retained the old idea
expressed by Laurenberg, Ray, Malpighi, and Grew that the function of the petals was to
purify the sap for the nourishment of the developing seed. Thus he writes that after the
embryo is conceived,

[n] othing is left for the petals to do other than the service that is customarily assigned

to them collectively, that is, to remove impurities from the sap and return it in puri-

fied form to ... the delicate seed containers.^63

At the end of his Epistola, Camerarius included a poem, written in a flowery Latin
style by an anonymous poet, celebrating the new sexual theory. The English translation
quoted here is taken from Patrick Blair’s Botanick Essays (172 0).^64 The poet begins his
exposition with the classical trope of spring winds (Favonius/ Zephyr) causing the flowers
to open, but here for the first time the wind’s fertilizing effect is directly associated with
the transport of pollen from the stamens to the pistil (“pointal”), which is personified as
a blushing bride:

When Winter’s gone, and Spring succeeds,

With gentle Blasts Favonius blows,

The opening Flow’rs each Sex disclose,

And promise future Seeds.