SEX, something in the body which distinguishes male from female.
SEX of Bees. See BEE.
SEXES of Plants. Theophrastus, the father of botany, frequently mentions the sexes of plants. He observes, that trees may be distinguished into several classes, on account of their great variety: but that their most common distinction is into male and female; the one of which is fertile; the other, in some sorts, barren. This distinction of the sexes, however, is not so much founded upon an analogy betwixt vegetables and animals, as upon the greater or less perfection of the fruit in the plants in question. In a species of palm-tree, mentioned by this author and Aristotle, the analogy in question is more strictly preserved. "If the dust of a branch of the male palm (says Aristotle) is shaken over the female, the fruit of the latter will quickly ripen; nay, (continues the same author), if this male dust shall be carried along with the wind, and dispersed upon the female, the same effect will follow as if a branch of the male had been suspended over it." To the same purpose Theophrastus observes, that unless the dust or down of the male palm is sprinkled over the fruit of the female, it will never ripen, but fall off. That these naturalists, however, were not clear in opinion that the fruit so sprinkled with the male dust was impregnated by it in the same manner as the ovary is fecundated in animals, appears from another passage in the last quoted author, in which he asserts, that though the fact just mentioned cannot be denied, yet no reason whatever can be assigned for the effect of the sprinkling.
Dioscorides, the next Greek botanist of note after Theophrastus, denominates many plants male and female, but without regard to analogy, or to their fertility or barrenness. Thus his male mercury carries the seed, and the female is barren. These ideas of the sexes of plants have been transferred to our own times; and it is not uncommon to hear peasants confounding the sexes of hemp, spinage, and hop, by calling the male plant female, and the female plant, or that which bears the seeds, male.
Aristotle, as well as Dioscorides, errs widely in his manner of distinguishing the male from the female plant; the former of which, in his opinion, is larger and stronger; the female weaker, but more fruitful.
"Naturalists," says Pliny, "admit the distinction of sex, not only in trees, but in herbs and all plants. Yet (continues the same author) this is no where more observable than in palms, the females of which never propagate but when they are fecundated by the dust of the male."
The palm-tree is the only instance among the ancients where sexes are attributed to particular plants on account of fertility or barrenness; other plants being, as we have seen, distinguished into male and female, merely for distinction's sake, and often erroneously. Cæsalpinus was the first who corrected the mistakes of the ancients with respect to the sex of plants, and established what are now generally called orthodox opinions on that subject. He observed, that
in some trees, as yew; and in some herbaceous vegetables, as mercury, hemp, and nettle; the fruit was produced on one root, and flowers only on the other: the last being barren, was denominated the male plant; the other being fertile, the female. The female plants, continues the same intelligent author, succeed better, that is, become more fruitful, if sowed in the neighbourhood of the male: certain exhalations from the latter dispersing themselves over their surface, and, by an operation not to be explained, disposing them to produce riper and more perfect seeds.
Cæsalpinus's idea of sex in plants was restricted to a very inconsiderable number; those, to wit, in which the pretended organs are placed apart from each other, on separate roots produced from the same seed. In plants of this description, their analogy to animals would, in a manner, suggest itself. From the same seed are produced two different plants; the one barren, the other fertile. The analogy to the sexes of animals immediately presents itself to the mind, and we denominate that which is barren, or bears no seeds, male; that which is fertile, or bears seeds, female. The same analogy carries us farther, and induces a conjecture, that these male and female plants are connected together in such a manner, that the fecundation of the seeds of the female is operated, as in animals, by the male. This conjecture, furnished by analogy, leads to observations and experiments for its support: and thus the doctrine of the sexes, small and inconsiderable in its beginnings, becomes enlarged, and, from being confined to a very small number of plants, extends itself over the whole vegetable kingdom.
Dr Nehemiah Grew is thought to have first suggested the universality of sexes in plants, and the primary use of the anthera apices, or tops of the stamens, in impregnating the seed. These tops, he observes, are chiefly useful to the plant itself; because all plants, even such as want the foliage or petals, are provided with them: he then plainly asserts, as his opinion, that when the tops, which he calls the attire, break or open, their inclosed pollen, or dust, falls down on the seed-bud, the vegetable uterus, and endues it with a prolific virtue; not, as he explains himself, by entering into it bodily, as the semen masculinum in animals, but by communicating to it some subtle and vivific effluvia.
This opinion of Grew was adopted by several succeeding botanists, particularly Mr Ray, Camerarius, Geoffroy, Samuel Morland, Dr Blair, Jussieu, Bradley, Van Royen, Malpighi, Vaillant, Ludwig, Wolfius, Logan, Monro, and the justly celebrated Linnaeus.
Ray, at first, mentions Grew's doctrine only as probable; but afterwards declares his full assent to it, and collects the arguments that are used to support it.
Rudolphus Jacobus Camerarius, about the end of the last century, endeavoured to demonstrate the analogy betwixt the generation of plants and animals. Among other arguments for the sex of plants, he makes use of the following: "That copulation (says he) is necessary in the generation of animals is past a doubt: that a similar junction obtains in that of plants appears from this circumstance, that if either the tops (anthera) of the male, or the styles of the female, or both,
Sex. are wanting, no fecundation, and consequently no generation, can take place." This assertion he exemplifies in the mulberry-tree, mays, and mercury, in which the stamina of the male flowers being either picked off before they had attained maturity, as in the two first instances, or placed at a distance from the female plant, as in the last, the buds that ought to have produced fruit came not to maturity. The same author speaks of the number of stamina in flowers; so that in his works we may recognize almost the first principles of the celebrated sexual system of Linnaeus.
However, almost a century before Grew, Zaluzianiski, a native of Poland, had clearly distinguished the sexes of plants, and pointed out the difference between male, female, androgynous, and hermaphrodite plants. Grew's improvements on the idea of Cæsalpinus and Zaluzianiski, have made him generally be considered as the author of the doctrine alluded to. Certain it is, that he has handled the subject with great accuracy, and endeavoured, by repeated microscopical examinations, to throw light upon this obscure, but curious inquiry.
Signor Malpighi, who was contemporary with Grew, likewise examined by the microscope the male or fecundating dust, the styles of the seed-bud, and the manner in which the antheræ open, or burst, when ripe.
Morland, Geoffroy, and Vaillant, who have written successively upon this subject, all concur in asserting, that the dust of the antheræ or tops of the stamina is entirely analogous to the semen masculinum of animals, and absolutely necessary for fecundating the seed. Morland, however, differs from Grew, in his conception of the manner in which the fecundation in question is accomplished. The latter, as we have seen, gave it for his opinion, that the fecundating dust did not enter bodily into the ovary of the plant, but operated its effect by means of some spirituous emanations, or vivifying effluvia. Morland, on the other hand, asserted, that "the male-dust is a congeries of seminal plants; one of which must be conveyed through the style into every ovum or seed, before it can become prolific." This hypothesis, as the reader will easily perceive, is analogous to that of animal generation, by means of animalcula in semine masculino. Geoffroy, in a memoir presented to the Academy of Sciences at Paris in 1711, on the structure and use of the principal parts of flowers, asserts, that the germ, or punctum vite, is never to be seen in the seed till the antheræ have shed their dust; and that if the stamina be cut out before the antheræ open, the seed will either not ripen, or be barren if it ripens. This last is Camerarius's great argument repeated.
In 1717, Mr Vaillant made some very ingenious discoveries with respect to the nature of the fecundating dust, and the manner of its explosion. He seems, says an ingenious French author, to have been the first eye-witness of this secret of nature, this admirable sport that passes in the flowers of plants between the organs of different sexes. Vaillant is entirely of Grew's opinion, that it is the volatile spirit of the male dust, not its gross or bodily substance, that enters the seeds of plants; the style, which leads to the
case containing the seeds, being frequently found perfectly solid and impenetrable by that substance.
Lastly, the celebrated Sir Charles Linnaeus has completed the doctrine of the sex of plants, by collecting all the arguments in support of it that can possibly be advanced; and by founding upon it a system, in which all vegetables are arranged under particular classes, distinguished by the number and other circumstances of their stamina or male organs. See BOTANY, passim.