Volume 48, Number 5 · March 29, 2001
Fraud Among the Flowers
By Tim Flannery
A Rum Affair: A True Story of Botanical Fraud
Karl Sabbagh
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 276 pp., $24.00
Erasmus Darwin (Charles's grandfather) celebrated Linnaeus's plant classification according to reproductive parts by rendering it into poetry.[1] Linnaeus's blatantly sexual classification was not so well received by the botanical mainstream, for whom it sat like an ugly toad in their field of flowers. 'It is possible that many virtuous students might not be able to make out the similitude of Clitoria,' lamented one eminent professor.[2] Like many other awkward matters in that Victorian age, the issue was astutely swept from sight by the chaste country curates and earnest young ladies who flocked to the fields.
Review, 2341 words
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