Flora Unveiled

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had regarded it more as an abstract ideal than as a real plant. However, while walking in

the Public Gardens of Palermo, admiring the luxuriant growth of the many exotic species

with their unfamiliar forms, he wondered whether the Urpflanzen might not be a real plant

after all:

Here where, instead of being grown in pots or under glass as they are with us, plants

are allowed to grow freely in the open fresh air and fulfill their natural destiny, they

become more intelligible. Seeing such a variety of new and renewed forms, my old

fancy suddenly came to mind: Among this multitude might I not discover the Primal

Plant? There certainly must be one. Otherwise, how could I recognize that this or that

form was a plant if all were not built upon the same basic model? ^48

But although Goethe collected plant specimens from every garden in Italy that he vis-

ited, he never found the Urpflanzen he sought. Upon his return to Germany in 1788, he

explained the concept of the Urpflanze to his new friend Friedrich Schiller and drew a

picture of what he thought it would look like. “That’s not an observation, that’s an idea,”

Schiller observed dismissively. “Well,” Goethe replied defensively, “I am quite happy that

I have ideas without knowing of them, and that I can even see them!”^49

Schiller was, of course, correct. What Goethe had conceptualized was not a real plant

but a schematic drawing of the sort found today in every introductory biology textbook

illustrating the fundamental arrangement of plant organs. Nevertheless, such heuristic dia-

grams can provide important biological insights. For example, Goethe astutely observed

that the vegetative body of plants is comprised of repeating anatomical units consisting of

an internode, leaf, and axillary bud. The modern term for this repeating morphological unit

is “phytomer.”

Goethe’s most famous statement on plant morphology was his conjecture that “Alles ist

Blatt” (“All is leaf ”), which came to him suddenly in the Public Gardens of Palermo:

[I] t came to me in a flash that in the organ of the plant which we are accustomed to

call the leaf lies the true Proteus who can hide or reveal itself in all vegetal forms. From

first to last, the plant is nothing but leaf, which is so inseparable from the future germ

that one cannot think of one without the other. ^50

Goethe interpreted the various lateral appendages on plant stems, including floral organs,

as successive modifications (“metamorphoses”) of the idealized primordial leaf. That floral

organs actually do represent modified leaves has now been confirmed at the molecular level,

and Goethe is justifiably celebrated for his original insight, which helped pave the way for

the early acceptance of Darwinian evolution.^51

Inspired by his experiences in Italy, Goethe began work on his famous treatise outlining

his theory of the metamorphosis of plants, which was published in 1790.

Metamorphosis and Plant Sexuality

“Metamorphosis,” as discussed in Chapter 7, is a Greek word made famous by Ovid in his

poems about the transformation of various mythic characters, mostly female, into plants.