i
350
13
Plant Nuptials in the Linnaean Era
After Camerarius had so elegantly demonstrated the potential of experiments to
elucidate the sexual role of pollen, one would have thought that botanists of the succeed-
ing century would rush to follow his lead. But with a few exceptions— most notably Joseph
Koelreuter— this was not to be the case. Surveying the reactions to the new sexual theory
of plants, nineteenth- century plant physiologist Julius von Sachs mordantly summarized
the confused responses of eighteenth- century botanists, seemingly caught off- guard by the
sudden paradigm shift:
some simply denied the new theory, many adopted it without understanding the ques-
tion, others formed a perverse or distorted perception of it under the influence of
reigning prejudices, while others again sought to appropriate to themselves the merit
of the real discoverer.“There were but few,” Sachs concluded, “who with a right understanding of the question
advanced it by new investigations.”^1
To some extent, the anemic response may have been due to the limited circulation of De
Sexu Plantarum Epistola, so limited that only a few early eighteenth- century botanists had
actually read the original. However, the main reason for the lack of experimental followup
was the fact that the primary preoccupation of botanists during the eighteenth century was
not experimental botany, but taxonomy, the supreme practitioner of which was the prolific
Swede, Carolus Linnaeus.
There were other factors at work as well. In England, for example, the early supporters of
the sexual theory were mainly gardeners and horticulturalists— practical men who recorded
their observations as time permitted. Nevertheless, these amateur botanists achieved several