California Farmer and Journal of Useful Sciences, Volume 3, Number 14, 5 April 1855 — Sexuality of Plants. [ARTICLE]

Sexuality of Plants.

The doctrine that plants are of different sexes, and which constitutes the foundation of the Linnean system, though but lately established upon the basis of logical induction, is by no means a novel doctrine. It appears to have been entertained even among the original Greeks, from the antiquity of their mode of cultivating figs and palms. Aristotle and Theoprastus maintained the doctrine of the sexuality of vegetables; and Pliny, Dioscorides, and Galen adopted the division by which plants were distributed into male and female; but chiefly upon the erroneous principle of habit or aspect, and without any reference to a distinction absolutely sexual. Pliny seems to admit the distinction of sex in all plants whatever, and quotes the case of a palm tree, as exhibiting the most striking example. Linnaeus, reviewing with his usual sagacity the evidence

on which the doctrine rested, and perceiving it was supported by a multiplicity of the most incontrovertible facts, resolved to devote bis labors peculiarly to the investigation of the subject, and to prosecute his inquires throughout the whole system of the vegetable kingdom: which great and arduous enterprise he not only undertook, but accomplished with a success equal to the unexampled industry with which he pursued it; so that by collecting into one body all the evidence of former discovery or experiment, and by adding much that was original of his own. he found himself at length authorized to draw the important conclusion "that no seed is perfected without the previous agency of the pollen ; that the doctrine of the sexes of plants is. consequently, founded on facts," — London Farmer's Magazine.