Flora Unveiled

Behind the Green Door j 395

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damage his reputation as a physician, Darwin published the book anonymously. At the

same time, he had high hopes for commercial success, even if it meant shocking a few

pious prudes.

Darwin’s epic poem was written in heroic couplets— rhymed couplets in iambic

pentameter— which had been used to such powerful effect in John Dryden’s translation of

Vi rg i l ’s Aeniad (1697) and Oliver Goldsmith’s Deserted Village (1770). Drawing on the pastoral

tradition, Darwin clothed the stamens and pistils of Linnaeus’s twenty- four classes in the garb

of shepherds and shepherdesses, knights and ladies, and other courtly inhabitants of Arcadia

so popular in eighteenth- century art and literature. Canto I begins with a ringing invocation:

Descend, ye hovering Sylphs! Aerial choirs,

And sweep with little hands your silver lyres;

With fairy footsteps print your grassy rings,

Ye Gnomes! Accordant to the tinkling strings;

While in soft notes I tune to oaten reed

Gay hopes, and amorous sorrows of the mead.—

From giant oaks, that wave their branches dark,

To the dwarf moss, that clings upon the bark,

What beaux and beauties crowd the gaudy groves,

And woo and win their vegetable loves ...

Darwin presents eighty- three species representing examples of each of the Orders and

Classes. Classes end with andria (monandria, diandria, triandria, etc.) and Orders end in

gynia (monogynia, digynia, etc.). He begins with one of the few monogamous, and therefore

“virtuous,” angiosperm flowers belonging to the class and order monandria monogynia—

Canna, or Indian cane:

First the tall CANNA lifts his curled brow

Erect to heaven, and plights his nuptial vow;

The virtuous pair, in milder regions born,

Dread the rude blast of Autumn’s icy morn;

Round the chill fair he folds his crimson vest,

And clasps his timorous beauty to his breast.

Each verse is accompanied by a footnote translating the ornate metaphors into dry,

unadorned prose. For example, the note for Canna reads:

Canna. Cane, or Indian Reed. One male and one female inhabit each flower. It is

brought from between the tropics to our hot- houses, and bears a beautiful crimson

flower; the seeds are used as shot by the Indians, and are strung for prayer- beads in

some catholic countries.

However, the modern interpretation of the monogamous relationship in the Canna

indica flower (canna lily) is actually far more complex than Darwin could possibly have

imagined. ^39