426 i Flora Unveiled
This apparent paradox may partially explain the rather cold reception that Sprengel’s
book received from his botanical peers. It was known, for example, that in some taxa
self- pollination did, indeed, occur, as in the case of certain kinds of orchids, peas, and
composites. These examples seemed to show that nature did not bar self- pollination as
Sprengel had asserted. However, we now know that self- pollination is either a fail- safe
mechanism that ensures fertilization under conditions that adversely affect insect pol-
lination or a relatively recent evolutionary branch from an insect- pollinated ancestor.^48
As will be discussed in Chapter 18, the true significance of insect pollination would not
be grasped until Darwin placed it in an evolutionary context in his landmark study of
outcrossing in 1876.^49
In addition to their qualms about outcrossing, Sprengel’s more pious contemporaries
also objected to what they considered to be a crassly materialistic interpretation of floral
ecology. Such critics refused to accept that God’s divine plan could be reduced to a series
of banausic transactions between flowers and insects, for God’s motives are, and always
shall be, mysterious and unknowable. But what his skeptical contemporaries found most
objectionable was Sprengel’s less than flattering portraits of some of God’s creatures, as
when he reported examples of “floral deception”— such as a rewardless flower (Orchis) with
fake nectaries— and the “stupid insects” who were fooled by the ruse, or when he described
“larcenous” insects, which stole nectar without performing pollination services, or insects
too clumsy to properly navigate floral structures to the nectaries.^50 To pious botanists, the
all- wise and all- knowing Creator would never incorporate fakery, stupidity, incompetence,
venality, or criminality into His works, and to say otherwise was tantamount to blasphemy.
But Sprengel, who had observed these traits in abundance at the Große Schule, thought he
knew better.
After publishing his book in 1793, Sprengel promptly resigned his position at the Große
Schule, much to the relief of his superiors. Sixty years later, a school historian wrote that
“[d] uring the directorship of Sprengel, an irascible and obstinate man, the school began to
lapse into ruin”— no doubt an exaggeration.^51 Soon after retiring at the age of forty- three,
supported by a modest pension, Sprengel moved to Berlin, where his friend Heim had his
practice, and took up residence in an attic apartment. There he happily pursued his schol-
arly interests free at last from the demands of teaching and administration. Although he
had planned to write a second volume of his flower book, he later dropped the idea due to
a lack of interest in the first volume. In 1811, he published a practical treatise entitled The
Usefulness of Bees and the Necessity of Bee- Keeping, Viewed from a New Perspective. In it he
advised farmers to place bee- hives in clover and alfalfa fields to increase seed set. His only
other botanical activity was to lead natural history field trips, open to the public for a small
fee, in the tradition of Linnaeus. After his death in 1817, those who joined him on these
excursions fondly remembered him for his encyclopedic knowledge of plants as well as his
piquant sense of humor, a side of his personality that his colleagues at the Große Schule
rarely, if ever, saw.
Although Koelreuter and Sprengel, alone in the eighteenth century, carried out research
on the sexual theory in the tradition of Camerarius, their contributions were so compelling
that any modern reader would have thought that the debate over plant sexuality was effec-
tively over. In 1761, Koelreuter had expressed the hope that