A Kind of Botanic Mania

joan W. Goodwin

The simplicity of Linnaeus’ classification system opened the field of botany to amateurs and its study was soon seen as "peculiarly adapted to females."

"I have this summer paid some attention to nist husbands and fathers. Linnaeus’s daughter Botany," wrote seventeen-year-old Sarah Alden Elizabeth Christina saw her report on phospho- Bradford (1793-1867) to fourteen-year-old rescence in nasturtiums published in the Trans- Abigail Bradford Allyn (1796-1860). "It is not a actions of the Royal Swedish Academy of very useful study, although a very pleasing one,"" Sciences in 1762.3 In this country, Jane Colden she continued. "It is however an innocent (1724-1766) was introduced to botany by her amusement, and enables us to discover Divine father, Cadwallader Colden, who wrote the first Wisdom, even in the construction of the small- local flora of New York based on the Linnaean est flower." Anticipating her family’s move system. Jane corresponded with experts in the later that year of 1810 from Boston to Duxbury, field on both sides of the Atlantic, was widely where her third cousin Abigail lived, Sarah praised for her botanical drawings, and was added her intention "to try to persuade you to commended to Linnaeus himself.4 join with me, in examining plants, and arrang- From the mid-eighteenth century on into the I ing them under their respective classes."’ nineteenth, the study of botany was considered Apparently she succeeded. Soon Sarah’s father especially appropriate for young women who, it was writing to her brother at Harvard that was assumed, liked flowers, were nurturing by "Sarah & Abba are studying Botany and one virtue of their gender, and would benefit from would think they hold converse only with the healthful but not strenuous outdoor exercise. As flowers for they in a manner seclude themselves Almira Phelps wrote in her Familiar Lectures from human observation & from communica- on Botany (1829), "the study of Botany seems tion with animal nature. I dont know what peculiarly adapted to females; the objects of its flower they affect to emulate but I dare say they investigation are beautiful and delicate; its pur- are known to each other under some order or suits, leading to exercise in the open air, are con- class of the Lin[na]ean system." If the Harvard ducive to health and cheerfulness."5 However, student should write to his sister, Bradford there was some concern that since the Linnaean advised him to "talk about calyx, corolla, & system was based on the sexual characteristics petals & I will engage you will be read."2 of plants, it might offend delicate sensibilities. Without realizing it, Sarah and Abba were In Britain, "desexualized" texts were created for part of a fashionable trend that was drawing female audiences, and in France Jean Jacques many young women into the study of botany. Rousseau omitted the Linnaean system in his The simplicity of the new binomial system 1771 Lettres elementaires sur la botanique, of classification devised by Swedish botanist written for a mother to use with her daughter. Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778)-which catego- Thomas Martyn’s English translation, Letters rized plants according to the number and posi- on the Elements of Botany, addressed to a lady, tion of the stamens and pistils of their flowers- on the other hand, suggested that the Linnaean opened the field of botany to amateurs, many of system be used for classification.6 whom made major contributions in describing Though much has been written about botany and classifying plants. Wives and daughters as "the female science," the letters of Sarah were introduced to the study as helpers of bota- Alden Bradford provide a rare record of the 188

natural history collections. It may well have been Judge Davis who first interested her in botany. Martyn’s version of Rousseau was available to Sarah in Judge Davis’s library, along with Linnaeus’s own Genera Plantarum (1754), Philosophla Botanica (1790), and Flora Lapponica (edited by J. E. Smith, 1792), and James Lee’s popular exposition of the Linnaean system, Introduction to Botany (Edinburgh, 1797).’ Back in Boston after a happy year in Duxbury, Sarah contin- ued her literary and botan- ical correspondence with Abba. From Judge Davis she bor- rowed The Botanic Garden ( 1789-1791 /, m which Charles Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus Darwin combined mythic and scientific elements in verse. The first part, "The Economy of Vegetation," depicts the god- dess Flora and numerous spirits as directing the vegetable king- dom. The second part, "The Loves of Plants," dealt with the Linnaean system in metaphors of courtship and marriage. Sarah described the first part to Abba as "very beautiful" This portrait of Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley at fifty-three, drawn by Cheney though "highly figurative" and m 1846, now hangs m the Old Manse m Concord, Massachusetts. "splendid perhaps even to a observations of a particular young woman fault." She did not expect to like the second caught up in the general excitement during part so well because "[i]t is founded on the those years. Sarah read French as well as sexual system of Linnaeus, that the dust of the English, and Gamaliel Bradford, her broad- anthers is absorbed by the pistil, and is abso- minded sea captain father, had even permitted lutely necessary to the production of perfect her to learn Latin along with her brothers. When seed, which system has since been exploded, Sarah and Abba were not botanizing, their heads and proved to have been but a fanciful idea of would be close together over the Aeneid, for that great botanist."8 John Allyn, Abba’s father and Duxbury’s minis- She praised Linnaeus for "making the number ter and schoolteacher, also believed m educating and situation of the stamens and pistils the daughters as well as sons. Sarah found another ground of distinction between the classes, mentor in Judge John Davis, a Boston neighbor orders, &c" and for reducing the number of whose avocation was natural history. He wel- classes, "which were before very numerous comed Sarah to his library and his extensive depending on differences in the leaves &c of 19

vegetables." However, she thought that "[t]he young people in epistolary form. The British idea of sexual distinction in plants, forming so author Priscilla Wakefield, for example, used striking an analogy between the animal and veg- the device of letters between two teenage sis- etable lcmgdoms, giving so important a part in ters, Felicia and Constance, one of whom is the economy of vegetation, to the dust of the learning botany and explaining her lessons to anthers, which otherwise appears entirely use- the other. 14 Whether or not Sarah had read the less to the plant, so caught the imagination of American edition of Wakefield (1811), she was Linnaeus, that he overlooked difficulties in the as eager as the young woman in the book to way of his favorite system, which have since share her discoveries. been proved conclusive arguments against it."9 "I warn you before you begin you will hear Indeed, the Scottish professor Charles Alston, nothing except de classe et ordine et genere, for among others, disputed Linnaeus’s claim that there prevaileth hereabouts a kind of Botanic the "dust of the anthers" was essential to repro- mania," Sarah wrote. She had obtained "our duction in plants and mstead likened pollen to great desideratum a work almost wholly con- excrement, thrown off by the plant as superflu- fined to Genera and species, so that if I find a ous.’° Sarah would soon learn, however, that flower whose name is unknown to me, I have Linnaeus’s system had not been "exploded." only to turn to the page where its particular In this instance and in others that follow, it class and order (whatever they may be) are writ- is interesting to see the scientific controversies ten above after the manner of a dictionary, and of the time from the viewpoint of this young compare it with the descriptions of the several devotee. Genera under that class, which are so exact that In 1813, though longing to return to the it is almost impossible to mistake them, and woods and fields of Duxbury, Sarah was recon- when I find one agreeing with it exactly, I have ciled to spending the summer in Boston by her its Generic name, I then turn to that Genus in father’s offer to take her to a series of botanical another volume on species and find its common lectures by William Dandridge Peck. "[T]hey or trivial name as botanists say, its properties, commence next week," she wrote excitedly the places where it usually grows &c."’s to Abba, "and we are besides to have the privi- Sarah shared her new knowledge of willow lege of visiting the Botanic garden as often as trees ("which you know are of the class we please."" Dioecia"), giving a meticulous description of Professor Peck, appointed to Harvard’s newly the blossoms, including "a nectarium scarcely created chair in natural history, was also direc- discernable to the naked eye but very plainly tor of the Botanic Garden, bounded by the seen with the help of that microscope we had present Linnaean, Garden, and Raymond Streets last summer." She urged Abba to examine the and augmented by a gift of land from the adjoin- willows in Duxbury and instructed her further ing Andrew Craigie estate. 12 According to Peck, about the nectarium "which varies very much the garden was "intended for the cultivation of in different flowers and in some makes almost plants from various parts of the world, to facili- their whole bulk, as in the Columbme, which tate the acquisition of botanical knowledge. It you will find in the swamp at the back of your was also intended to receive all such mdigenous house, those four hollow tubes resembling trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants, as are wor- horns are the nectana which I know by experi- thy of attention, as being useful in domestic ence for I have sucked the honey out of them economy, in the arts, or in medicine." Begun many a time."’6 with contributions from nearby greenhouses, it She also learned about Cryptogamia when was gradually enlarged by travelers to the East "Mr. Peck, our lecturer gave us a curious plant and West Indies and Africa.’~ called Equisetum or horsetail, it bears its fructi- Soon Abba was treated to a secondhand ver- fications in a spike, which is composed of little sion of the Peck lectures. In fact, Sarah’s letters plates in the form of shields supported on short over the next few years offer a striking parallel foot stalks, their edges hung round with bags to contemporary botanical texts written for which when viewed with the microscope 20

resemble the fingers of a glove, when they are amazing force; others borne as it were in a light ripe they burst open and drop out balls which balloon cut the liquid air, or skim the surface of are supposed to be the seeds, to which are the wavel"’9 affixed four strings resembling and supposed to As the lectures came to an end, Sarah was be antherae."1’ bursting with things to tell Abba. She was par- Another friend of Sarah’s to receive accounts ticularly struck with Professor Peck’s account of of the lectures was Mary Moody Emerson, one Linnaeus’s discovery of the sleep of plants. "He of whose young nephews would later become [Linnaeus] was presented with some unknown famous. "We have been attending a course of plants in blossom, and not having time to exam- Botanical lectures, and have found them numer- ine them, he ordered the gardener to set them ously frequented by the beau-monde," Sarah out, and take particular care of the blossom. At mformed Mary, adding archly that "we are evening being at leisure he visited them and to pleased to see so rational an amusement in fash- his chagrin and disappointment the flowers ion ; by exciting a taste for nature it may perhaps were not to be found. The gardener was repri- render the country supportable to some of our manded and promised to be more careful in fine ladies." "Linnaeus was the lady’s man," she future. The next morning they were visible and observed later, "and the ladies have just found Linnaeus engaged again deferred visiting them it out."’8 till evening when the flowers had disappeared For Mary, Sarah described henbane: "Its lurid as before. This was done thrice, and at length and disagreeable aspect and foetid smell would examining them more closely, he found the flo- repel all but the botanist. The whole plant is ral leaves at the base of the blossoms had risen covered with a fine kind of glutinous hair. The and completely enveloped them. Struck with colour of its blossom is a dirty yellow striped the idea that some such change might take place with dark purple. It is a most deadly poison, but in all plants, at midnight with a lantern he vis- as is generally the case with plants of its affin- its his greenhouse, and there sure enough he ity has been discovered to possess great medici- finds his dear family all sound [asleep]. The sol- nal virtue." Knowing that Mary was more emn hour of night combined with the silence interested in the state of her soul than in her and novelty of the scene affected Linnaeus even newly acquired knowledge, Sarah added a reli- to tears. They were the tears of admiration and gious note. "Instances like these daily multi- gratitude we may suppose a parent might shed plied are unspeakably delightful," she wrote. at the development of some new faculty in a "They vindicate the ways of God to man. What beloved offspring." As a demonstration to his a world of wonders the vegetable creation class, "Mr Peck brought a plant asleep one unfolds to the enquiring eye! If the grand, mag- morning, which was very carefully wrapped nificent, stupendous frame of some parts of the up in cotton wool to keep it from the light; Divine scheme have oft compelled the exclama- the leaves were curiously folded together, but tion ’what is man that thou art mmdful of him’ by exposing it to the influence of the sun’s how instantly is the doubt relieved when we rays, before lecture was over it had begun to behold the admirable and complicated provision recover. "zo for the preservation, multiplication, and When Professor Peck lectured on Linnaeus’s disperson of the most minute and to limited experiment with the fig tree, Sarah was con- human knowledge apparently most useless spe- vinced, if she had not been before, of the sexual cies of vegetation!" She went on with a poetic function of flowers. She described for Abba "an description of the variety of seed dispersal: exhibition with the solar microscope of the "those furnished with silken wings soar aloft flowers of the fig tree which grow within the wafted by some propitious breeze to their des- fruit, and are curious also as being an example of tined spot. Those armed with hooks avail them- the 23 class. The fig was quoted and termed selves of passing travellers’ aid for conveyance. fructussine flore in contradiction to an assertion Some confined in an elastic case, when ripe of Linnaeus that flowers were absolutely neces- burst their prison, and are propelled abroad with sary to the production of fruit. [However, 21

Linnaeus] discovered the hiding place of the blossoms and taught his opponents that in many cases, in order to form an accurate judg- ment it is necessary to look beyond the surface."2’

The following summer found Sarah still enthusiastic about botany. She encouraged Abba to visit her, writ- ing, "Craigie’s swamp will be full of flowers, Smith’s botany will be pub- lished, and we will enjoy ourselves finely together. "~2 In 1814, Jacob Bigelow, founder and president of Boston’s Linnean Society, brought out the American edition of James Edward Smith’s popular English botany text, trusting that "the present edition will not be unac- ceptable to the public, particularly to students attending the botanical lectures m this place, for whose use it was originally undertaken. "23 He added notes on American plants and an expanded glossary of botani- cal terms. In Smith Sarah could read the full account of the "lumi- nous experiment" in which Linnaeus removed the anthers from Wilham Dandndge Peck, professor of natural history and foundmg a the rest of the flower, destroying dmector of the Harvard Botanic Garden In Cambridge (1805-1822), and another day’s blossoms, day credited his mterest m natural history to an "imperfect" copy of repeating the process but sprinkling Lmnaeus’s Systema Naturae that he retmeved from a ship wrecked pollen from another flower on the near his home m Newbury, Massachusetts. Almost immediately on stigma of one from which he had being named director of the yet-to-be-created Harvard Botamc removed the anthers. When the Garden m 1805, William Peck set sail for Europe, where for three years he visited the great seeds, books, first flower no fruit while gardens, collectmg plants, produced and ideas. the second produced perfect seed, Linnaeus had proved his point, according to made. Its pleasures spring up under our feet, Smith.z’ and, as we pursue them, reward us with health In Smith’s eyes, the facts of plant life did not and serene satisfaction.... The more we study detract from the delight of botanical study. "The the works of the Creator, the more wisdom, natural history of animals, in many respects beauty and harmony become manifest, even even more interesting to man as an animated to our limited apprehensions; and while we being, and more striking in some of the phe- admire, it is impossible not to adore."25 nomena which it displays, is in other points less As we have seen, Sarah, with her Unitarian pleasing to a tender and delicate mind," he upbringing, had already found botany to be a wrote in his preface, while "[i]n botany all is religiously illuminating experience. "If you elegance and delight. No pamful, disgusting, have never examined a dandelion flower," she unhealthy experiments or inquiries are to be wrote Abba, "you will find it very curious, the 22

A Plan for the Botanic Garden at Cambridge The idea for "a large well-sheltered garden and orchard for students addicted to planting" was broached at Harvard as early as 1672, and in 1784 the King of France offered "to furnish such [botanic] garden with every species of seeds and plants which may be requested from his royal garden, at his own expense." Finally, in 1805, a collaboration between the College and the Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agri- culture provided for a professorship of natural history; among the duties of the professor was the forma- tion of a "Botamc Garden on the grounds that shall be provided for that purpose."* William Dandndge Peck promptly set sail for a lengthy tour of western Europe. At Uppsala Peck acquired seeds of 150 species of plants and 500 herbarium speci- mens that "are such as are rare and valuable, especially as they are from persons of the most correct information." He was told there "that the arrangement of plants m a garden according to Classes and orders in the [Linnaean] System is both difficult and inconvement; but the disposition of them according to their natural orders m concen- tric circles is much more commodious." In 1808 he sent a plan (top right) from Paris that grew out of several conversations at the Jardm des Plantes with M. Thoum, "a gentleman of eminence in the profession of ornamental gardening." It provided for vari- ous trees and flowering shrubs; small lawns with flowers and shrubs; hothouse, green- houses, cold frames, and hotbeds. The "gar- den of Arrangement or Botamc School" forms the large central oval (D). From Kew Peck had written, "A reservoir of water fed and kept sweet by a small spring is the best situation for aquatic plants." Accordingly, "Bason or reserves with running and stag- nant waters" are designated at center (C). Peck had seen the Garden’s site only briefly before his European trip, and although he remembered the wetland, he did not recall the shape of the grounds. In the 1888 plan (bottom right) some of the elements of the 1808 scheme can be seen, including a pool for aquatic plants at the cen- ter of the concentric planting beds. Native and exotic trees and shrubs were planted at once, and later came a conservatory; native herbs around a spring in the southwest cor- ner ; seedplots, cold frames, and hotbeds screened by a hedge of European beech; a gardener’s cottage. ’ Goodale, George L. 1991 The Botamc Garden at Cambridge. Harvard Register, Vol. 3 (Jan.). 23

downy wings of the seeds by which they are feel her dignity much impaired by kindred with " scattered far and wide. The perfect uniformity the majestic elm or delicate sensitive plant," of the little flowers, each with its pistil and five she wrote, "but how would you receive the hand stamens united by the anthers, the filaments of fraternity extended by a potato or toadstool? separate, almost too small to be distinguished Distinctions which appear so striking and with the naked eye. The same order, regularity marked when extremes are compared blend and beauty are as visible in the least as in insensibly mto each other as we descend, and the greatest of the works of creation. Do you genus is linked with genus in a chain which the think a dandelion could have been the work of delighted philosopher cannot nor does not wish chance? Surely that study cannot be entirely to dissolve. Nature never disturbs us with useless which can make even this most despised abrupt transitions in any of her operations; of flowers a source of admiration and enter- broad day softens into twilight, twilight deepens tainment, a demonstration of the hand of a into the shades of evening; the process of vegeta- Creator."z~ tion, from the first swelling of the seed till the Two years after the lecture series, Sarah won- perfect plant appears in all the luxunancy of dered if Abba was reading Smith and recom- foliage and beauty of fructification, is so imper- mended the sixteenth chapter on the functions ceptible that we are affected with no wonder or of leaves. "It is amusing," she wrote, "to trace admiration at the secret agency of Divine power the striking analogies between the animal and in the successive stages of its progress and are vegetable kingdoms in respiration, secretion & astonished only when we compare what it is all the similar and diversified effects of the vital with what it was."2~ principle in each. Theories which pretend to explain these effects in vegetation on chemical Sarah continued botanical study throughout her or mechanical principles are unsatisfactory." life. Three years after she wrote the letter Just Smith had mentioned heat and wmd as possible quoted, she married the Rev. Samuel Ripley, the causes for the flow of sap from root to branch.z’ Unitarian mmister in Waltham who also kept a It seemed to Sarah that "[t]he attraction of cohe- boarding school to prepare boys for Harvard. In sion may account for the ascent of fluids to addition to teaching Latin, Greek, and math- small heights, but not for the propulsion of the ematics in the school, Sarah raised her own sap from the spreading roots of the oak through- seven children and an adopted niece and man- out the unnumbered ramifications of its tower- aged the large household with only sporadic ing limbs; that this most important function help. Collecting excursions to Prospect Hill and should depend on the agitation of the inconstant visits from an expert amateur botanist, the Rev. breeze is equally inconceivable; if you ascribe it John Russell, provided much-needed recreation to the vital energy and suppose some action of during those busy years. the spiral coated sap vessells similar to the pul- When Asa Gray was appomted Fisher Profes- sation of the arteries, a distinction sufficiently sor of Natural History at Harvard in 1842, he broad is marked between organic and morganic was told about "a learned lady in these parts, bodies, and the operations of animal and veg- who assists her husband in his school, and etable organs analogous in their curious struc- who hears the boys’ recitations m Greek and ture and combinations, are explained from geometry at the ironing-board, while she is similar causes. How regular the gradation too smoothing their shirts and jackets! ... reads from species to species in the long series of German authors while she is stirring her pud- organized existance! "zs ding, and has a Hebrew book before her, when Continuing her line of thought, she con- knitting.... Even my own occupation may soon fronted Abba with a botanical extension of the be gone; for I am told that Mrs. Ripley (the popular philosophical idea of the Great Chain of learned lady aforesaid) is the best botanist in Being supposed to link deity and the hierarchy the country round. "30 of heavenly spirits with humans and the lower Soon Gray was sharing his books with this animals. "I suppose your ladyship would not learned lady. One, "a beautiful edition of a 24

french work on botany," gave Sarah "great plea- notes by Jacob Bigelow, M.D. (Boston: Bradford & 253. Smith names Tournefort and sure in getting at the mind of a man of genius Read, 1814), Pontedera as of the same through his scientific method." She found it being opimon. 11 SAB to ABA, n.d. SABR. "much more satisfactory to begm from the root (1813/, lz E. Harvard’s and study upwards, than to pick open a flower, Jeannette Graustein, Only Massa- chusetts Professor of Natural Harvard count the stamens refer it to a class and it a History, give Alumm Bulletm (December 13, 1958/, 243. name."3’ When a book on European mosses 13 William Dandndge Peck, A Catalogue of American came to the botanical library, Gray promised and Foreign Plants Cultmated in the Botamc to loan it to her as soon as he had finished with Garden, Cambndge, Massachusetts (Cambridge: it himself.32 University Press, 1818). Sarah her last in retirement at 14 spent years the Pmscrlla Wakefield, An Introduction to Botany, m a Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, where Series of Familiar Letters (1st British ed., 1796, 6th some of her mounted specimens may be seen. ed., Philadelphia: Kimber & Conrad, 1811)./. 15 In her seventies, she was still teaching botany, SAB to ABA, n d. (1813), SABR. Sarah offers no writing to a young grandson, "I long to have the authors or titles for the books she was using pnor to the publication of the American edition of Smith. bright days of summer come for you and dear ’~ - little Ezra to gather flowers of all kinds.... And Ibid. poor old GrandMa will tell him all she knows, 17 Ibid and put them in a book that has pretty flowers, 18 SAB to MME, n.d (1813); Sept 5 1817? SABR which have been pressed and kept a great while, 19 SAB to MME, n.d. (1813), SABR. and are still and beautiful."33 zo bright SAB to ABA, n.d. (1813), SABR. z’ Ibid. Endnotes zz SAB to ABA, n.d. (1814), SABR. 1 SAB to n.d Sarah Alden Bradford ABA, (1810?), z3 Ripley Papers, MC 180, Schlesrnger Library, Radcliffe Jacob Bigelow, "Advertisement to the American College, hereafter cited as SABR. Edition," Smith, v. za 2Gamaliel Bradford to Gamaliel Bradford, Jr., Smith, 253. "Thursday" (1810?), Bradford Papers, bMS Am zs Ibid., 18-20. 1183.32, by permission of the Houghton Library, z~ SAB to ABA, n.d. Harvard University 1812? SABR. z’ 3 Smith, 54-55. Ann B. Shteir, "Lmnaeus’s Daughters. Women and z$ British Botany," in Barbara J. Harris and Jo Ann K. SAB to ABA, Sept. 30 (1815), SABR. McNamara, eds., Women and the Structure of z9 Ibid. Society (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1984), 3o 69. Jane Lonng Gray, ed., Letters of Asa Gray (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1893), I’ 289 4 See Mary Harnson, "Jane Colden: Colomal Amencan 31 SAR to F. Botanrst," Arnoldia (Summer, 1995) 55(2): 19-26. George Simmons, June 26, 1844, SABR. Unfortunately, Sarah failed to mention the name of 5 in Vera Made From This Earth. Quoted Norwood, this "man of genius" or the title of his book. Amencan Women and Nature Hill: (Chapel 32 Dec. 1844. University of North Carolina Press, 1993)( Ibid, 12, 33 SAR to William n.d. 6 Ann B. Shterr, Cultmatmg Women, Cultivating Sydney Thayer, (wmter, spring, MS 296 of the Science. Flora’s and in 1867?), Storage ~#51/, by permission Daughters Botany England, Harvard 1760-18G0 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Houghton Library, University Press, 1996), 19-20, 23. Acknowledgments ~ the Pmvate the Late Catalogue of Library of Judge The author wishes to thank Peter Stevens of the Harvard Dams Alfred (Boston: Mudge, 1847), 17, 20, 43. University Botany Department and Mary Harnson, s SAB to ABA, Nov 3 ~ 1812? SABR. Arnold Arboretum volunteer, as well as Arnoldia editor 9 Ibid. Karen Madsen for their helpful comments. lo Shteir, Cultmatmg Women, Cultivating Science, 17. James Edward Smith, An Introduction to Joan W Goodwm, who lives in Brookline, Massa- Physiological and Systematical Botany, First chusetts, is an mdependent scholar now completing a American, from the Second English Edition, with biography of Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley.