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Janet Browne has noted that, in the majority of cases, Darwin focused on the actions of

the females in his verses.^41 In each of the scenarios, it is the behaviors of the females that

tend to drive the dramatic action. In contrast, the males “were not given the same attention

or depth of characterization, even in some cases being sketched solely in terms of almost

empty labels such as ‘swain’ or ‘beau.’ ” In the realm of plant sexual reproduction, it is the

feminine principle that governs the outcome, consistent with Linnaeus’s claim that the

feminine “medulla” provides the impetus or “will” to produce seed, whereas the masculine

“cortex” only determines the external appearance of the plant. Both Linnaeus and Erasmus

Darwin granted female sexuality a dominant role in the “oeconomy” of plants, which may

help to explain why asexualist critics, all of whom seem to have been men, were so morally

outraged. This is not to suggest that either Linnaeus or Darwin were proto- feminists— far

from it. As discussed by Londa Scheibinger and Janet Browne, both Linnaeus and Darwin

shared the same patriarchal attitudes as their contemporaries, although Darwin was clearly

the more radical of the two in other areas, such as religion and politics.^42 Both men were

romantics, and romantics by definition are sentimentally attached to the past. Thus it is not

surprising that they would both invoke the classical poets while metaphorically emphasiz-

ing the feminine aspect of plants.

“The Anthers and Stigma Are Real Animals”

Although tongue- in- cheek, Erasmus Darwin’s personification of plants was more than just

a literary conceit. Like many other botanists in the eighteenth century, Darwin believed

that plants could experience a variety sensations:  including hunger, fatigue, embarrass-

ment, desire, and so on, although not as keenly as animals do. And he was not alone in

these beliefs. Writing in 1787, René- Louis Desfontaines, Professor of Botany at the

Jardins des Plantes, described the quivering of sexually aroused stamens in response to

“the action of the pistil itself, which incites each stamen to orgasm, similar in a sense to

the familiar orgasm that occurs in the sexual parts of animals.” Concurrently, according

to Desfontaines, the style expands slightly, “as if the law requiring a certain modesty in

females were common to all organized beings.”^43 His reasoning here is unclear, to say the

least, but perhaps Desfontaines interpreted expansion of the style as the plant equivalent

of blushing. Along the same lines, the British botanist Benjamin Cooke, FRS, in 1748,

claimed that the styles of white- seeded maize plants consciously blushed crimson upon

contacting pollen from a red- seeded variety:

On the Manner of Impregnation of the Seeds in Mayze— I can add this, that if the

seed and whole Species of Mayze be planted about two Yards Distance from each

other, there will be a Mixture of red and white Grains in the Ears of each Plant, and

you may with Pleasure observe the Filament in the white Plant, which hath been

struck with the red Farina, discovering its alien Commerce by a conscious Blush.^44

If Cooke actually observed the coloration of the silk as he describes, it is, of course, not

due to embarrassment but to the presence of the red pigment, anthocyanin, which can be

triggered by a variety of external conditions. In his poem “Zoonomia” (1794– 1801) Darwin

writes, “The anthers and stigma are real animals. ... They are affected with the passion of