Sex in animals has been known for at least ten thousand years, and this knowledge was put to good use during animal domestication in the Neolithic period. In stark contrast, sex in plants wasn't discovered until the late 17th century, long after the domestication of crop plants. Even after its
discovery, the "sexual theory" continued to be hotly debated and lampooned for another 150 years, pitting the "sexualists" against the "asexualists". Why was the notion of sex in plants so contentious for so long? Flora Unveiled is a deep history of perceptions about plant gender and sexuality,
beginning in the Ice Age and ending in the middle of the nineteenth century, with the elucidation of the complete plant life cycle.
Linc and Lee Taiz show that a gender bias that plants are unisexual and female (a "one-sex model") prevented the discovery of plant sex and delayed its
acceptance long after the theory was definitively proven. The book explores the various sources of this gender bias, beginning with women's role as gatherers, crop domesticators, and the first farmers. In the myths and religions of the Bronze and Iron Ages, female deities were strongly identified
with flowers, trees, and agricultural abundance, and during Middle Ages and Renaissance, this tradition was assimilated into Christianity in the person of Mary. The one-sex model of plants continued into the Early Modern Period, and experienced a resurgence during the eighteenth century
Enlightenment and again in the nineteenth century Romantic movement. Not until Wilhelm Hofmeister demonstrated the universality of sex in the plant kingdom was the controversy over plant sex finally laid to rest. Although Flora Unveiled focuses on the discovery of sex in plants, the history serves
as a cautionary tale of how strongly and persistently cultural biases can impede the discovery and delay the acceptance of scientific advances.
Preface
1. The Quandary Over Plant Sex
2. Sex and Plants in the Ice Age
3. Crop Domestication and Gender
4. Plant-Female Iconography in Neolithic Europe
5. Sacred Trees and Enclosed Gardens
6. Mystic Plants and Aegean Nature Goddesses
7. The "Plantheon" of Greek
Mythology
8. Plant Sex from Empedocles to Theophrastus
9. Roman Assimilation of Greek Myths and Botany
10. From Herbals to Walled Gardens: Plant Gender and Iconography
11. Troubadours, Romancing the Rose, and the Rebirth of Naturalism
12. The Difficult Birth of the Two-Sex
Model
13. Plant Nuptials in the Linnaean Era
14. Behind the Green Door: Love and Lust in Eighteenth Century Botany
15. War of the Roses: Ideology versus Experiment
16. Idealism and Asexualism in the Age of Goethe
17. Sex and the Single Cryptogam
18. Flora's Enclosed Gardens
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Lincoln Taiz completed his doctoral and postdoctoral research at U.C. Berkeley, and after joined the faculty at UC Santa Cruz. Dr. Taiz has published numerous research articles on a wide range of topics in plant physiology, and is the co-author of the standard textbook in the field, Plant
Physiology and Development, now in its sixth edition. Since 2007 he has been a Fellow of the American Society of Plant Biologists.
Lee Taiz spent many years as a research biologist at UC Santa Cruz and is now a fulltime freelance artist.
