Flora Unveiled

360 i Flora Unveiled

the Windward side [i.e., direction from which the wind blows], this Red and Blue

Row, so infected Three or Four whole Rows, as to communicate the same Colour unto

them; and part of ye Fifth, and some of ye Sixth. But to the Lee- ward Side, no less than

Seven or Eight Rows, had ye same Colour communicated unto them; and some small

Impressions were made on those that were yet further off.^24

The second “experiment,” which involves hybridization between squash and gourd
plants, is more problematical:

The same Friend had his garden ever now and then Robbed of the Squashes, which

were growing there. To inflict a pretty little punishment on the Thieves, he planted

some Gourds among the squashes (which are in aspect very like ‘em) at certain places

which he distinguished with a private mark, that he might not be himself imposed

upon. By this method, the Thieves were deceived & discovered, & ridiculed. But yet

the honest man saved himself no squashes by this Trick; for they were so infected and

Embittered by the Gourds, that there was no eating of them.

Unlike endosperm, fruit tissues are entirely maternal in origin and their genotype is that
of the mother plant. For gourd pollen to cause the squash fruit to become bitter, it would
have to involve some type of physiological interactions between the hybrid embryo and
endosperm of the seed and the surrounding fruit tissues. Such physiological interactions do
occur in some species but are not known to occur in the squash family.
If the bitterness of the squash is not due to physiological interactions between the fruit
and the seed, it cannot have been caused by hybridization with the gourd plants. The most
generous explanation for the claim that pollen from the gourd plant embittered the squash
plant is that it was caused by a hybridization event that occurred in the previous generation
of squash plants from which Mather’s friend obtained his seeds.

Thomas Fairchild and the First Artificial Hybrid

While Sébastien Vaillant and Claude- Joseph Geoffroy were busy savaging each other over
who was the worse “thief ” regarding the discovery of sex in plants, a modest, unassuming
British commercial florist, Thomas Fairchild, was putting Grew’s sexual theory to the test
by attempting to cross two different members of the genus Dianthus, a member of the car-
nation, or pink family. Fairchild operated a large garden in Hoxton from about 1692 until
his death in 1729. According to author Michael Leapman, Fairchild’s nursery in Hoxton
was on the must- see list of gardening aficionados throughout England:

Fairchild had gained a reputation as one of the most skillful nurserymen in

England. ... He was one of several in his trade known as “curious” gardeners, in the

old- fashioned sense that they displayed curiosity about every aspect of their craft. At

a time when England was experiencing a real upsurge of interest in gardens and what

grew in them, more and more people were flocking to Hoxton, then a leading center

of the trade, to gaze at the latest wonders on display at his and a clutch of neighbor-

ing nurseries.^25