Flora Unveiled

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Aristotle never mentioned hybridization of plants for the simple reason that hybrid-

ization required two sexes, and, in Aristotle’s view, plants were effectively unisexual and

female.

Intimations of Plant Sex in the Bible

Was the Greek view of the absence of plant sex shared by their Mediterranean neighbors in

the Levant? There is some tantalizing evidence from the Hebrew Bible that the early Jews

may have had some vague notion of plant hybridization. For example, in Leviticus 19:19, we

find the admonition against various types of mixing:

Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with diverse kind; thou shalt not sow thy field with

mingled seed; neither shall a garment mingled of linen and wool come upon thee.

Because of the inclusion of both living and nonliving objects in the list, it is impossible to

say whether the injunction against “mingled seed” is equivalent to the “gendering” of cattle

or to the mingling of linen and wool fibers in a garment. However, in Deuteronomy 22:9,

a similar injunction against intercropping, the mixing of seed in vineyards, is given that

implicates some type of hybridization process:

Thou shalt not sow thy vineyard with diverse seeds; lest the fruit of thy seed which

thou hast sown, and the fruit of thy vineyard be defiled.

In this case, the author seems to suggest that some type of “defilement” can occur as the

result of mixing grape vines and the seeds of other crops. According to Flavius Josephus, a

historian of the Jews in Roman times, the preceding two biblical passages should be inter-

preted as follows:

The seeds are also to be pure and without mixture, and not to be compounded of two

or three sorts, since nature does not rejoice in the union of things that are not in their

own nature alike.^27

This interpretation of the mingling of seed is very similar to descriptions of animal

hybridization, consistent with the idea of sex in plants. But since no physical basis for the

mixing of plant species is ever given in the Hebrew Bible, it is probably a metaphysical con-

cept rather than a biological one. In Genesis 1:11– 12, God says,

Let the earth bring forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and fruit trees

of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it. ...

And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation:  plants yielding seed of every

kind and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it.^28

Note that the passage specifies that the newly created trees bear fruit “with the seed in it,”

without any mention of sexual reproduction.