viii i Preface
qualities we attribute to males or females. The association of plants with women and the
entanglement of ideas about plants with ideas about gender roles appears early in human
history. This association goes beyond mere analogy based on the resemblance of the gravid
female to the swelling fruit that contains a seed that can reproduce its own kind. Social and
economic roles come into play as well. The association of plants, especially flowers, with
women is a thread that can be found weaving through vast periods of human history, influ-
encing the way in which plants were, and are, perceived. It is an important thread that we
try to follow.
Thus, simply focusing on the chain of successful theories and experiments that led to
our current understanding of sex in plants would be inadequate to answering our ques-
tions. Failed theories and experimental artifacts were not mere curiosities or impediments
to progress, as they most certainly were from a strictly scientific perspective. Examining
them became crucial to the understanding of process, to answering the question “Why?”
Our approach to the history of the discovery of sex in plants is both “whiggish” and
contextual. On the one hand, we consider the problem over a sweeping timespan, from the
Paleolithic to the middle of the nineteenth century. On the other hand, the book is divided
into historical periods in specific geographic regions that were significant in terms of the
development of science. We restrict ourselves to Western civilization because the endpoint
of the narrative is the full elucidation of the sexual cycle of plants and the subsequent con-
solidation of the plant kingdom as a taxonomic unit, which occurred in Europe during the
modern period. For the time being at least, we leave aside parallel developments in Asia and
the New World that did not lead to the scientific understanding of plant sex.
The challenge to discover what human beings thought about the lives of plants in dif-
ferent eras of human history, and how these perceptions advanced or hindered the under-
standing of sex in plants, was formidable. We realized at the outset that, in order to do
justice to our subject, we needed to go far beyond conventional research. We needed to
inhabit the landscapes where the significant events of our history had actually occurred
and engage first- hand with the places where important dramatis personae had actually lived
and worked. As a result, research for this book became both a pilgrimage and an adventure.
Over many years, it took us through some of the world’s most significant archaeological
sites, libraries, and museums, and its most fascinating historical gardens. We believe that
our journeys impart a resonance to this history that could not have been achieved other-
wise. But although we were able to explore a wealth of relevant locales, some of the places
that we wished to encounter were inaccessible because of war or political turmoil. Like a
great many others, we have shed tears as irrecoverable archaeological sites, museums, and
monuments of the past have been looted or destroyed in recent years, some of these crimes
committed in senseless wars, some in the name of religion. Contemplating the disasters that
have ensured that countless treasures can never again be seen in the history of the world has
increased our boundless gratitude to the people and institutions that have rescued so much
irreplaceable material from destruction.