Flora Unveiled

Wars of the Roses j 427

427 427

even the most stubborn doubter of the truth of the sexuality of plants would be com-

pletely convinced. If, contrary to all conjecture, there should be someone who, after a

rigid examination, maintained the contrary, it would astonish me greatly as though

I heard someone maintain in the middle of a clear day that it was night.

But Koelreuter badly underestimated the depth and tenacity of the asexualist view of

flowers, especially among his fellow Germans, who, in the nineteenth century, fanned the

lingering sparks of asexualism into a new blaze.

Notes

1. Delaporte, F. (1982), Nature’s Second Kingdom, trans. Arthur Goldhammer. MIT Press.


2. Marquis de Condorcet (1799), Eloge de M. Duhamel, in Eloges des Academiciens, Vol. III,
   p. 319.


3. The Confessions of Jean- Jacques Rousseau, Vol. XXIII, Book I.  Quoted by Delaporte,
   F. (1982), p. 141.


4. Rousseau, Jean- Jacques (1793), Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire (promenade V),
   Quoted in: Delaporte, F. (1982), Nature’s Second Kingdom, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, p. 141.


5. O’Neal, J.  C. (1996), The Authority of Experience:  Sensationist Theory in the French
   Enlightenment. Pennsylvania State University Press.


6. Rousseau, Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire (promenade VII), Quoted in Delaporte,
   Nature’s Second Kingdom, p. 137.
   7. Ibid.


7. Idem., p. 140.


8. Cook, A.  (2012), Jean- Jacques Rousseau and Botany:  The Salutary Science. Voltaire
   Foundation, Oxford.


9. Rousseau, Jean- Jacques (1762), Émile, Or Treatise on Education.


10. Rousseau, Jean- Jacques (1807), Letters on the Elements of Botany, trans. T. Martyn. John
    White. Mary Wollstonecraft deplored this kind of squeamishness. She wrote, “Children very
    early see cats with their kittens, birds with their young ones, &c. Why then are they not to be
    told that their mothers carry and nourish them in the same way? As there would be no mystery
    they would never think of the subject more.” Wollstonecraft, M.  (1996), A Vindication of the
    Rights of Woman, Dover, pp. 53– 54. Originally published in 1792 by J. Johnson.


11. Mary Wollstonecraft (1759– 97) was a prolific writer. As an early feminist, political theo-
    rist, and novelist, she was regarded as a radical during her lifetime. She is perhaps best known
    for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). She was the wife of William Godwin, author of
    Political Justice and the mother of Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.


12. Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.


13. Möller, Hans (1752), Fortsetzung der muthmasslichen Gendanken vom Bluhmenstaube.
    Hamburgerisches Magazin, Hamburg and Leipzig III:427. Cited by F. Delaporte (1982).


14. Alston, C. (1754), A Dissertation on the Sexes of Plants. Essays and Observations, Physical
    and Literary. Read before the Philosophical Society in Edinburgh. Translated from French
    posthumously in 1771, pp. 228– 318; See also Alston, C. (1754), A Dissertation on Botany, trans-
    lated from the Latin. B. Dod. (Originally published as Tyrocinium Botanicum Edinburgense.)