May 26, 2021 Becoming a Garden Designer, Sébastien Vaillant, William J. Fisher, Lily of the...
Today we celebrate a French botanist who broke the news to the scientific community in Paris: plants have sex. We'll also learn about a German botanist who settled in Kodiak, Alaska, and created a fascinating look at Alaskan plants through the eyes of the Native People of Alaska. We hear an excerpt about Lily of the Valley from one of my favorite modern writers. We Grow That Garden Library™ with a book about houseplants and how to incorporate them into your home, your life, and your happiness. And then we’ll wrap things up with the birthday of a poet who wrote some beautiful verses inspired by nature. Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart To listen to the show while you're at home, just ask Alexa or Google to “Play the latest episode of The Daily Gardener Podcast.” And she will. It's just that easy. The Daily Gardener Friday Newsletter Sign up for the FREE Friday Newsletter featuring: A personal update from me Garden-related items for your calendar The Grow That Garden Library™ featured books for the week Gardener gift ideas Garden-inspired recipes Exclusive updates regarding the show Plus, each week, one lucky subscriber wins a book from the Grow That Garden Library™ bookshelf. Gardener Greetings Send your garden pics, stories, birthday wishes, and so forth to Jennifer@theDailyGardener.org Curated News Career Changers: How To Become A Garden Designer | The English Garden | Phoebe Jayes Facebook Group If you'd like to check out my curated news articles and original blog posts for yourself, you're in luck. I share all of it with the Listener Community in the Free Facebook Group - The Daily Gardener Community. So, there’s no need to take notes or search for links. The next time you're on Facebook, search for Daily Gardener Community, where you’d search for a friend... and request to join. I'd love to meet you in the group. Important Events May 26, 1669 Today is the birthday of the French botanist Sébastien Vaillant. Appointed to the King’s garden in Paris, Sebastien loved organizing and cataloging plants. Biographical accounts say Sebastian showed a passion for plants from the age of five. His masterpiece, forty years in the making, Botanicon Parisienne, was a book about the flora of Paris. It wasn’t published until five years after his death. Today, Sebastian Vaillant is credited for acknowledging the importance of the sexual anatomy of plants. Sebastian’s work on plant sexuality inspired generations of botanists and set the stage for Linneaus to develop his sexual system of plant classification. Linnaeus used the male stamens to determine the class and the female pistils to determine the order. And like Sebastion, Linnaeus often compared plant sexuality to that of humans. Linnaeus wrote, “Love even seizes... plants... both [males and females], even the hermaphrodites, hold their nuptials, which is what I now intend to discuss.” Sebastian caused a sensation when he presented his work on plant sexuality at the Royal Garden in Paris on June 10, 1717. He began by reinforcing the idea that the flower is the most important part of a plant - essential to reproduction - and then he began to lead his scientific colleagues down a path they had never thought to follow. His lecture was titled, Lecture on the Structure of the Flowers: Their Differences and the Use of Their Parts. Today, we can imagine the reaction of his 600 person audience as he began using fairly explicit language and the lens of human sexuality to describe the sex lives of plants - at six in the morning, no less. Before Sebastian’s lecture, the topic of sex in the plant world had only been touched on lightly, allowing flowers and blossoms to maintain their reputation as pure, sweet, and innocent. Sebastian was no fool. He knew his lecture would cause a stir. In a 2002 translation of his speech presented in A Journal of Botanical History known as Huntia, Sebastian began his lecture by acknowledging that he was going to talk about plant sexuality very explicitly, saying, “Perhaps the language I am going to use for this purpose will seem a little novel for botany, but since it will be filled with terminology that is perfectly proper for the use of the parts that I intend to expose, I believe it will be more comprehensible than the old fashioned terminology, which — being crammed with incorrect and ambiguous terms better suited for confusing the subject than for shedding light on it — leads into error those whose imaginations are still obscured, and who have a poor understanding of the true functions of most of these structures.” It wasn’t all salacious. Sebastian’s discussion of plant embryos was rather poetic. The shapes he references are the shapes of the pollen grains. Sebastian remarked, “Who can imagine that a prism with four faces becomes a Pansy; a narrow roll, the Borage; a kidney, the Daffodil; that a cross can metamorphose into a maple; two crystal balls...
Today we celebrate a French botanist who broke the news to the scientific community in Paris: plants have sex. We'll also learn about a German botanist who settled in Kodiak, Alaska, and created a fascinating look at Alaskan plants through the eyes of the Native People of Alaska. We hear an excerpt about Lily of the Valley from one of my favorite modern writers. We Grow That Garden Library™ with a book about houseplants and how to incorporate them into your home, your life, and your happiness. And then we’ll wrap things up with the birthday of a poet who wrote some beautiful verses inspired by nature. Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart To listen to the show while you're at home, just ask Alexa or Google to “Play the latest episode of The Daily Gardener Podcast.” And she will. It's just that easy. The Daily Gardener Friday Newsletter Sign up for the FREE Friday Newsletter featuring: A personal update from me Garden-related items for your calendar The Grow That Garden Library™ featured books for the week Gardener gift ideas Garden-inspired recipes Exclusive updates regarding the show Plus, each week, one lucky subscriber wins a book from the Grow That Garden Library™ bookshelf. Gardener Greetings Send your garden pics, stories, birthday wishes, and so forth to Jennifer@theDailyGardener.org Curated News Career Changers: How To Become A Garden Designer | The English Garden | Phoebe Jayes Facebook Group If you'd like to check out my curated news articles and original blog posts for yourself, you're in luck. I share all of it with the Listener Community in the Free Facebook Group - The Daily Gardener Community. So, there’s no need to take notes or search for links. The next time you're on Facebook, search for Daily Gardener Community, where you’d search for a friend... and request to join. I'd love to meet you in the group. Important Events May 26, 1669 Today is the birthday of the French botanist Sébastien Vaillant. Appointed to the King’s garden in Paris, Sebastien loved organizing and cataloging plants. Biographical accounts say Sebastian showed a passion for plants from the age of five. His masterpiece, forty years in the making, Botanicon Parisienne, was a book about the flora of Paris. It wasn’t published until five years after his death. Today, Sebastian Vaillant is credited for acknowledging the importance of the sexual anatomy of plants. Sebastian’s work on plant sexuality inspired generations of botanists and set the stage for Linneaus to develop his sexual system of plant classification. Linnaeus used the male stamens to determine the class and the female pistils to determine the order. And like Sebastion, Linnaeus often compared plant sexuality to that of humans. Linnaeus wrote, “Love even seizes... plants... both [males and females], even the hermaphrodites, hold their nuptials, which is what I now intend to discuss.” Sebastian caused a sensation when he presented his work on plant sexuality at the Royal Garden in Paris on June 10, 1717. He began by reinforcing the idea that the flower is the most important part of a plant - essential to reproduction - and then he began to lead his scientific colleagues down a path they had never thought to follow. His lecture was titled, Lecture on the Structure of the Flowers: Their Differences and the Use of Their Parts. Today, we can imagine the reaction of his 600 person audience as he began using fairly explicit language and the lens of human sexuality to describe the sex lives of plants - at six in the morning, no less. Before Sebastian’s lecture, the topic of sex in the plant world had only been touched on lightly, allowing flowers and blossoms to maintain their reputation as pure, sweet, and innocent. Sebastian was no fool. He knew his lecture would cause a stir. In a 2002 translation of his speech presented in A Journal of Botanical History known as Huntia, Sebastian began his lecture by acknowledging that he was going to talk about plant sexuality very explicitly, saying, “Perhaps the language I am going to use for this purpose will seem a little novel for botany, but since it will be filled with terminology that is perfectly proper for the use of the parts that I intend to expose, I believe it will be more comprehensible than the old fashioned terminology, which — being crammed with incorrect and ambiguous terms better suited for confusing the subject than for shedding light on it — leads into error those whose imaginations are still obscured, and who have a poor understanding of the true functions of most of these structures.” It wasn’t all salacious. Sebastian’s discussion of plant embryos was rather poetic. The shapes he references are the shapes of the pollen grains. Sebastian remarked, “Who can imagine that a prism with four faces becomes a Pansy; a narrow roll, the Borage; a kidney, the Daffodil; that a cross can metamorphose into a maple; two crystal balls...