Indian Reed
Canna indica

American Cowslip
Dodecatheon meadia

Round-Leaf Sundew
Drosera rotundifolia

Lamb of Tartary
Cibotium barometz

Sensitive Plant
Mimosa pudica

Peruvian Bark Tree
Cinchona officinalis

Golden Shower Tree
Cassia fistula

Night-Blowing Cereus
Selenicereus grandiflorus

Pheasant’s-Eye
Adonis annua

Indian Reed
Canna indica

American Cowslip
Dodecatheon meadia

Round-Leaf Sundew
Drosera rotundifolia

Lamb of Tartary
Cibotium barometz

Sensitive Plant
Mimosa pudica

Peruvian Bark Tree
Cinchona officinalis

Golden Shower Tree
Cassia fistula

Night-Blowing Cereus
Selenicereus grandiflorus

Pheasant’s-Eye
Adonis annua

  • Start
  • About
  • Contact
  • Contributors
  • Survey
  • Share
  • The New York Botanical Garden
  • The LuEsther Mertz Library
  • The Humanities Institute
  • The Steere Virtual Herbarium

American Cowslip Dodecatheon meadia

American Cowslip Dodecatheon meadia

American Cowslip
Dodecatheon meadia

Dodecatheon meadia illustration by Catesby Dodecatheon meadia illustration by Catesby

Mark Catesby

The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands  (1754)

Mark Catesby
The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands

(1754)

“To this new genus of Plants, I have given the name of the learned Dr. Richard Mead, Physician to His Majesty, and F.R.S. in gratitude for his zealous patronage of arts and sciences in general, and in particular for his generous assistance towards carrying the original design of this work into execution.”

Dodecatheon meadia illustration by Sowerby Dodecatheon meadia illustration by Sowerby

William Curtis

The Botanical Magazine; or, Flower-Garden Displayed  (1790)

William Curtis
The Botanical Magazine; or, Flower-Garden Displayed

(1790)

“This plant grows spontaneously in Virginia and other parts of North America, from whence, as Miller informs us, it was sent by Mr. Banister to Dr. Compton, Lord Bishop of London, in whose curious garden he first saw it growing in the year 1709.

“It is figured by Mr. Catesby, in his Natural History of the Carolina, among the natural productions of that country, who bestowed on it the name of Meadia, in honor of the late Dr. Mead, a name which Linnæus has not thought proper to adopt as generic, though he has as a trivial one.”

Dodecatheon meadia illustration in Allgemeines Teutsches Garten-Magazin Dodecatheon meadia illustration in Allgemeines Teutsches Garten-Magazin

Friedrich Justin Bertuch

Allgemeines teutsches Garten-Magazin  (1805)

Friedrich Justin Bertuch
Allgemeines Teutsches Garten-Magazin

(1805)

“We hereby announce to all friends of the garden and economists a journal serving the public good, with the above title; a journal which should hopefully be not superfluous as in all manner of garden writings that now grow as quickly as mushrooms from the earth and always copy from one another, but rather quite needed.”

Dodecatheon meadia illustration by Robert Thornton Dodecatheon meadia illustration by Robert Thornton

Robert John Thornton

Temple of Flora  (1807)

Robert John Thornton
Temple of Flora

(1807)

“Whilst Nature appeared to be only industrious to make the habitation of man gay and delightful, she was carrying on her principal design, being intent upon the continuance, and preservation, of the species. The story of the American Cowslip fully explains this. Now we may observe ... the Penducles, which were before bent downwards, moving with every Zephyr, gradually become rigid and erect. In its perfect state it might easily raise to our fancy the image of a vegetable sky-rocket in different periods of explosion, or some might conceive it to resemble a number of light shuttlecocks, fluttering in the air.”

Meadia by S. T. Edwards Meadia by S. T. Edwards

Sydenham Edwards

The New Botanic Garden  (1812)

Sydenham Edwards
The New Botanic Garden

(1812)

“From among these leaves arise two, three, or four flower-stalks, in proportion to the strength of the roots, which rise eight or nine inches high, smooth, naked, and terminated by an umbel of flowers, which are purple, inclining to a peach blossom colour. It is native of Virginia, flowering about the end of April or beginning of the following month.”

Dodecatheon meadia herbarium specimen Dodecatheon meadia herbarium specimen

G. H. French

NYBG Steere Herbarium Specimen (1873)

G. H. French
NYBG Steere Herbarium

(1873)

Herbarium Specimen

Variety: Dodecatheon meadia var. frenchii Vasey.

Location United States of America. Illinois. Union County.

Collector: G. H. French. 10 May 1873

Description: Phenology of specimen: Flower, Fruit.

Dodecatheon meadia photograph Dodecatheon meadia photograph

Jennifer Anderson

Palisades State Park (2001)

Jennifer Anderson
Palisades State Park

(2001)

Pride of Ohio

Location: Savannah, Illinois, United States

Image hosted by the USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database

Dodecatheon meadia flower photograph Dodecatheon meadia flower photograph

Jan Koeman

Yosemite Natural Park, California, USA (2008)

Jan Koeman
Tuolumne Camping Ground, Yosemite Natural Park, California, USA

(2008)

American Cowslips with flowers upturned

Camera: Nikon D300

Shutter Speed: 1/80

Focal Length: 55mm

ISO: 200

Previous Next
Erasmus Darwin’s The Botanic Garden

Meadia’s soft chains five suppliant beaux confess,
And hand in hand the laughing belle address;
Alike to all, she bows with wanton air,
Rolls her dark eye, and waves her golden hair.

Meadia. l. 61. Dodecatheon, American Cowslip. Five males and one female. The males, or anthers, touch each other. The uncommon beauty of this flower occasioned Linnæus to give it a name signifying the twelve heathen gods; and Dr. Mead to affix his own name to it. The pistil is much longer than the stamens, hence the flower-stalks have their elegant bend, that the stigma may hang downwards to receive the fecundating dust of the anthers. And the petals are so beautifully turned back to prevent the rain or dew drops from sliding down and washing off this dust prematurely; and at the same time exposing it to the light and air. As soon as the seeds are formed, it erects all the flower-stalks to prevent them from falling out; and thus loses the beauty of its figure. Is this a mechanical effect, or does it indicate a vegetable storgé to preserve its offspring? See note on Ilex, and Gloriosa.

(II.1:61—5)

Taxonomy

Linnæan Classification (1753)

Class: 5. Pentandria (Five Males)
Order: I. Monogynia (One Female)
Genus: Dodecatheon
Species: Dodecatheon meadia

Modern Classification

Class: Equisetopsida C. Agardh
Subclass: Magnoliidae Novák ex Takht.
Super-
order:
Asteranae Takht.
Order: Ericales Bercht. & J. Presl
Family: Primulaceae Batsch ex Borkh.
(Primrose Family)
Genus: Dodecatheon L.
Species: Dodecatheon meadia L.
A Parental Love of the Plant?

The American cowslip displays a distinctive shape: its flowers, growing in an umbel, hang downwards. Each of its petals reflex upwards from the base of the flower. Robert Thornton’s description of it as a “shuttlecock” is, as the above images attest, quite apt. This dangling pendent shape is what constitutes this plant’s, in Maria Jacson’s words, “peculiar elegance.” Darwin, moreover, calls attention to two functions of the plant’s peculiar morphology.

First, he remarks on the fact that the stigma of this plant greatly exceeds the length of its anthers. This disproportion is the reason, in fact, that the plant must “bow with wanton air,” otherwise the short anthers would not be able to pollinate the stigma, in Darwin’s interpretation. The reflexed petals offer protection for pollination by shielding it from the elements. Darwin observes that the complex and unusual morphology of this flower would have been avoided if only the anthers had grown longer, for then the flower would not have to hang downwards. He infers from this that the filaments must be the most immutable part of the plant. He continues this train of thought in a later work, Phytologia (1800), arguing that since filament length is the plant’s most immutable characteristic, it should serve as the essential trait for classification.

Second, Darwin remarks on another aspect of the plant’s physiology: once the seeds are formed, the flower-stalks that previously hung downward become upright. He considers an explanation of this phenomenon that would have seemed as far-fetched in his time as it does in ours, that the Dodecatheon meadia turns up its flower-stalks out of a desire to protect its future offspring. Storgé, along with eros, philia, and agape, are Ancient Greek words for love; in distinction from the latter words, storgé signifies a parental love or affection. Darwin’s quite deliberate use of it thus suggests that the plant’s behavior is not due to blind mechanism (instinct, biochemistry, etc.), but rather because of its affection for its future offspring. Under this interpretation, plants, just like humans, express affection for their future children, as in protecting them from environmental harms. Turning upward, then, is a form of prenatal care.

Throughout his poem, Darwin consistently challenges the longstanding estimation of the ontological status of plants. From Aristotle to Linnæus and into our present age, sensibility, locomotion, and volition were and are consistently denied to plants but accorded to animals. Darwin asserts, to the contrary, that plants have each of these capacities, if only in a diminished form. He states this position clearly in his Zoonomia, a more explicitly scientific book published after The Botanic Garden. In it, he writes, “The approach of the anthers in many flowers to the stigmas, and of the pistils of some flowers to the anthers, must be ascribed to the passion of love, and hence belongs to sensation.” Two plants, in particular, encapsulated the challenge to eighteenth-century thinking about plants: see The Sensitive Plant (Mimosa pudica) and the carnivorous plants like the Common Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia) and Venus Flytrap (Dionæa muscipula). For a recent discussion of the ontological status of plants, see the provocatively titled Brilliant Green: The Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence (2015) by Stefano Mancuso and Alessandra Viola. The question of what plants are and what capabilities they have is by no means resolved.

In her poetic treatment of this class and order, Pentandria Monogynia, Frances Arabella Rowden conveys a remarkable story. She indicates in the footnote that she wrote the verse at the request of a friend, who had been able to find her only solace from a husband on the brink of death in the quiet company of her cowslip, which she watched grow in the greenhouse. Just as Darwin’s plant cared for its offspring, the cowslip here cares for this woman in her time of distress, as she cares for it and her husband. Rowden’s verse is positively chilling and rewards reading in full.

The plant, though, that Rowden writes about is the cowslip (Primula veris), which is different than the American cowslip (Dodecatheon meadia). The American plant received its name, as one might guess, because it looked similar to the former English species. The etymological origin of “cowslip” itself, though, is a bit more of a mystery. It may refer to the boggy habitat of the plant or cow dung, in which the plant also often grows. In The Gardeners Dictionary, Philip Miller says he will continue to use “American cowslip,” as the common name, but will do so only begrudgingly, for the plant, he complains, remains in want of a proper name. He would have likely preferred its common name today, “shooting star.”

The binomial name was also not without its controversy. Although Catesby had suggested “Mead” as a genus name, rather than as a species epithet, Linnæus adopted it for the latter, using “Dodecatheon” for the genus, which means twelve heathen gods, apparently in reference to the plant’s beauty. This adoption, no doubt, ruffled a few of the many pious feathers in the 1700s, but they can now rest a little easier, knowing that Austin R. Mast and James L. Reveal have recently argued (2008) that based on genetic evidence the genus Dodecatheon should be taxonomically moved into the genus Primula, thereby making the genus monophyletic. Under this new organization, then, D. meadia becomes Primula meadia, and the pantheon is no more. Although modern taxonomy may have begun with Linnæus (see Canna indica), its work is far from done.

Maria Jacson’s Sketches of the Physiology of Vegetable Life  (1811)

The beautiful Umbel of Dodecatheon (Meadia) derives its peculiar elegance from the pendent direction of its flexile peduncles; by which position the pistil, being much longer than the stamens, receives with more certainty the dust of the anthers. The fertilization of the seeds is being thus secured, their protection is to be next provided for; and this we see effected by a sudden change of position in the footstalks, from a pendent to an erect position; the former rendering the seeds liable to be lost before they have attained to a state of maturity, and the latter preserving them securely in their seed-vessels, until ripe for dispersion.

(p. 65)

Dodecatheon meadia  (2008)
Dodecatheon meadia by Jan Koeman

—by Jan Koeman, Tuolumne Camping Ground,
Yosemite Natural Park, California, USA

Philip Freneau’s Poems Written and Published During the American Revolutionary War  (1809, 3rd ed.)

STANZAS

Written Near a Certain Clergyman’s Garden

A GARDEN he has, and that we are agreed on,
But not of the sort that lie eastward in Eden:*—
The nose or the eye here is little treat,
And, what is still worse, there is little to eat....

Some poppies, indeed, he is careful to keep,
Which, much like some sermons, incline us to sleep:
But, for primrose, or snow-drop, or cowslip—as soon
You might find in this garden a Spanish doubloon....

This garden of gardens where nothing is sown
But contemptible plants, and of eatables none,
Where all is so meager, and all is so lean,
And never the step of a female was seen,

Assures us no Satan will ever come here,
To search for a woman, or look for good cheer;
Not an angel a-near it the townsmen will find,
Nor a snake from the swamp—to be-devil mankind.

* Genesis, chap. ii. verse 8.

(vol 1, pp. 219—220)

Help us improve this exhibition

Take a Survey

Meadia  (1791)
Meadia by William Blake

—illustrated by William Blake and engraved by F. P. Nodder,
The Botanic Garden

A Parental Love of the Plant?

The American cowslip displays a distinctive shape: its flowers, growing in an umbel, hang downwards. Each of its petals reflex upwards from the base of the flower. Robert Thornton’s description of it as a “shuttlecock” is, as the above images attest, quite apt. This dangling pendent shape is what constitutes this plant’s, in Maria Jacson’s words, “peculiar elegance.” Darwin, moreover, calls attention to two functions of the plant’s peculiar morphology.

First, he remarks on the fact that the stigma of this plant greatly exceeds the length of its anthers. This disproportion is the reason, in fact, that the plant must “bow with wanton air,” otherwise the short anthers would not be able to pollinate the stigma, in Darwin’s interpretation. The reflexed petals offer protection for pollination by shielding it from the elements. Darwin observes that the complex and unusual morphology of this flower would have been avoided if only the anthers had grown longer, for then the flower would not have to hang downwards. He infers from this that the filaments must be the most immutable part of the plant. He continues this train of thought in a later work, Phytologia (1800), arguing that since filament length is the plant’s most immutable characteristic, it should serve as the essential trait for classification.

Second, Darwin remarks on another aspect of the plant’s physiology: once the seeds are formed, the flower-stalks that previously hung downward become upright. He considers an explanation of this phenomenon that would have seemed as far-fetched in his time as it does in ours, that the Dodecatheon meadia turns up its flower-stalks out of a desire to protect its future offspring. Storgé, along with eros, philia, and agape, are Ancient Greek words for love; in distinction from the latter words, storgé signifies a parental love or affection. Darwin’s quite deliberate use of it thus suggests that the plant’s behavior is not due to blind mechanism (instinct, biochemistry, etc.), but rather because of its affection for its future offspring. Under this interpretation, plants, just like humans, express affection for their future children, as in protecting them from environmental harms. Turning upward, then, is a form of prenatal care.

Throughout his poem, Darwin consistently challenges the longstanding estimation of the ontological status of plants. From Aristotle to Linnæus and into our present age, sensibility, locomotion, and volition were and are consistently denied to plants but accorded to animals. Darwin asserts, to the contrary, that plants have each of these capacities, if only in a diminished form. He states this position clearly in his Zoonomia, a more explicitly scientific book published after The Botanic Garden. In it, he writes, “The approach of the anthers in many flowers to the stigmas, and of the pistils of some flowers to the anthers, must be ascribed to the passion of love, and hence belongs to sensation.” Two plants, in particular, encapsulated the challenge to eighteenth-century thinking about plants: see The Sensitive Plant (Mimosa pudica) and the carnivorous plants like the Common Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia) and Venus Flytrap (Dionæa muscipula). For a recent discussion of the ontological status of plants, see the provocatively titled Brilliant Green: The Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence (2015) by Stefano Mancuso and Alessandra Viola. The question of what plants are and what capabilities they have is by no means resolved.

In her poetic treatment of this class and order, Pentandria Monogynia, Frances Arabella Rowden conveys a remarkable story. She indicates in the footnote that she wrote the verse at the request of a friend, who had been able to find her only solace from a husband on the brink of death in the quiet company of her cowslip, which she watched grow in the greenhouse. Just as Darwin’s plant cared for its offspring, the cowslip here cares for this woman in her time of distress, as she cares for it and her husband. Rowden’s verse is positively chilling and rewards reading in full.

The plant, though, that Rowden writes about is the cowslip (Primula veris), which is different than the American cowslip (Dodecatheon meadia). The American plant received its name, as one might guess, because it looked similar to the former English species. The etymological origin of “cowslip” itself, though, is a bit more of a mystery. It may refer to the boggy habitat of the plant or cow dung, in which the plant also often grows. In The Gardeners Dictionary, Philip Miller says he will continue to use “American cowslip,” as the common name, but will do so only begrudgingly, for the plant, he complains, remains in want of a proper name. He would have likely preferred its common name today, “shooting star.”

The binomial name was also not without its controversy. Although Catesby had suggested “Mead” as a genus name, rather than as a species epithet, Linnæus adopted it for the latter, using “Dodecatheon” for the genus, which means twelve heathen gods, apparently in reference to the plant’s beauty. This adoption, no doubt, ruffled a few of the many pious feathers in the 1700s, but they can now rest a little easier, knowing that Austin R. Mast and James L. Reveal have recently argued (2008) that based on genetic evidence the genus Dodecatheon should be taxonomically moved into the genus Primula, thereby making the genus monophyletic. Under this new organization, then, D. meadia becomes Primula meadia, and the pantheon is no more. Although modern taxonomy may have begun with Linnæus (see Canna indica), its work is far from done.

Taxonomy

Linnæan Classification (1753)

Class: 5. Pentandria (Five Males)
Order: I. Monogynia (One Female)
Genus: Dodecatheon
Species: Dodecatheon meadia

Modern Classification

Class: Equisetopsida C. Agardh
Subclass: Magnoliidae Novák ex Takht.
Super-
order:
Asteranae Takht.
Order: Ericales Bercht. & J. Presl
Family: Primulaceae Batsch ex Borkh.
(Primrose Family)
Genus: Dodecatheon L.
Species: Dodecatheon meadia L.
Frances Arabella Rowden’s A Poetical Introduction to the Study of Botany  (1801)

CLASS V.

PRIMULA

Primrose.u

PENTANDRIA, MONOGYNIA

As fell Disease with scowling eye advanc’d,v
At my soul’s lord her deadly shaft she lanced;
Round his fine brow her poison’d wreath she wove,
And to dark cypress chang'd the flow'rs of love:
Sad, o'er his mournful couch, Despair was seen
To hang with frantic grief and haggard mien;
While fond Affection clasped him to her heart,
And shriek’d in agony, “Tis death to part;
Live, live for me!” in piercing tones she cried,
On her wan lips the fault’ring accents died;
“Thy Anna’s voice was wont to raise a smile,
Soothe thy dark brow, thy pensive cares beguile:
Can it not give thee to my longing arms,
Restore thee health, and ease my sad alarms?...

“How oft, lov’d Primula, my tortur’d breast
Sought in thy bow’rs a momentary rest;
Oft on thy charms with heavy eye I gaz’d,
And sigh’d o’er beauties that my hand had rais’d.
Five tender brothers form’d thy modest train,
And sooth’d my woes with music’s heav’nly strain;
Thy gentle hand wip’d my fast falling tears,
Cheer’d me with hope, and calm’d my anxious fears:
The hope you have with joy my bosom fir’d,
And with salvation’s pow’r my arm inspir’d.

u Five stamens, one pistil. It belongs to a natural order called Preciae, from precius, early ripe, and comprehends such plants as flower early in the spring: their general characters are a monophyllous quinquefid permanent calyx, a monopetalous quinquefid corolla, and a capsule for a seed-vessel, superior or inclosed within the calyx....

v These lines were written at the request of a friend, who, during a dangerous indisposition of her husband, found her only relaxation from the confinement of a sick room in visiting her greenhouse, and among its flowers she watched with peculiar pleasure the expansion and growth of this favorite Primrose.

(pp. 26—8)

Meadia  (1791)
Meadia by William Blake

—illustrated by William Blake and engraved by F. P. Nodder,
The Botanic Garden

Continue the Exhibition

Next Species:

Common Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia)

See it in the LuEsther Mertz Library
  • Phillip Miller, The Gardeners Dictionary (1731)
  • Carl Linnæus, Species plantarum (1753)
  • Mark Catesby, The natural history of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands (1754)
  • William Curtis, The Botanical Magazine, or Flower-Garden Displayed (1790)
  • Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic Garden (1791)
  • Robert John Thornton, Temple of Flora (1807)
  • Sydenham Edwards, The New Botanic Garden (1812)
  • Frances Arabella Rowden, A Poetical Introduction to the Study of Botany (1818, 3rd ed.)
  • Stefano Mancuso and Alessandra Viola, Brilliant Green: The Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence (2015)