The Botanic Garden. Part 2, Containing the Loves of the Plants. a Poem.: With Philosophical Notes.

In 1789, Erasmus Darwin did something no scientist or poet had quite attempted before: he turned the Linnaean sexual system of plant classification into verse, transforming the stamen and pistil into lovers in a botanical boudoir. The result is a poem that reads like a scientific comedy of manners, where flowers court and couple according to their reproductive anatomy, and the classes of plants become cast members in an elaborate dramatic poem. Darwin's playful premise scandalized some readers and delighted others: here was serious natural philosophy dressed in the attire of a gallant pastoral, complete with Flora dancing with Cupid and the Rose confessing its passions to the sighing breeze. The poem brims with wit, mechanical explanations of plant processes rendered in heroic couplets, and an infectious delight in the natural world's hidden mechanics. Philosophical notes appended to each section ground the fantasy in the botany of Erasmus Darwin's era, making this as much a work of Enlightenment popular science as it is a curiosity of literary history. For readers today, it offers a window into how the educated class of the 18th century imagined the living world, and why the grandfather of Charles Darwin remains a fascinating figure in the history of evolutionary thought.