394 i Flora Unveiled
The malevolent forces of anarchy and free love had even infected Mother Nature’s flower
arrangements:
“By the legs shall a right perfect flower & his bride
“With mules and hermaphrodites daily be ty’d
“Can a marriage made public & marriage clandestine
“The same common bed with strict decency rest in ...“Ye wives with ten husbands, say will they content ye
“Whilst a neighbor lies by you with no less than twenty
“Ye husbands in wives tho’ not stinted to few
“Don’t envy the Flower that has concubines too
“Ye ladies with eunuch, no is it not hard
“That your virtue should seem to require such a guard
“While your gay- painted cowslip may gad where she will
Yet her husband good creature suspecteth no ill
“Patricians stand forth and say what lady’s bosom
“Makes amends for your joining a plebian blossom ...”In “The Backwardness of Spring Accounted For,” Seward paints a daringly racy
spectacle of sexual promiscuity among the f lowers in which social hierarchies are
ignored, which no doubt explains why Seward published the poem anonymously.
Never fear, Mother Nature exhorts, “some scholars at Lichfield” are “compiling my
classification”:
“These great legislators will shortly prescribe
“The laws rules & habits of every tribe
“Thus their manners no longer each other will shock
“What is wrong for the rose may be right in a dock ...”Seward cleverly turns on its head the asexualist argument that the Linnaean sexual sys-
tem is both immoral and a threat to the social order. Linnaeus did not invent plant sex,
she asserts; he simply brought it under control and made it conform to the natural laws
appropriate for each tribe. Thanks to Linnaeus, proclaims Mother Nature, plants from dif-
ferent classes will now restrict themselves to their proper taxonomic sphere and will no
longer shock each other by attempting to cross class barriers. According to Mother Nature,
everyone who values stable government has reason to commend the Linnaean system for
bringing harmony and order to the plant kingdom:
“Rejoice then my children the hour is at hand
“When Botanical knowledge shall govern the land ...”Erasmus Darwin eventually wrote the extended poem on the Linnaean classification
system that he had previously urged Anna Sward to write. “The Loves of Plants” was
published in 1789, as the French Revolution was getting underway. Fearful that it might