DON'T SAY IT WITH NIGHTSHADES: SENTIMENTAL BOTANY AND THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ATROPA BELLADONNA

Extract

THE VICTORIANS' PASSION FOR plants has been well established as a defining feature of the period, and scholars from the humanities and the sciences – from literature, history, anthropology, botany, art, and religion – have lavishly documented how this obsession pervaded every aspect of nineteenth-century British life, creating what was truly the golden age for the “Culture of Flowers,” to borrow the title of Jack Goody's ethnobotanical study tracing traditional and ceremonial uses of flowers through history and around the globe. As Brent Elliott argues, improvements in greenhouse design beginning in 1817 and the use of the Wardian case from the 1830s for transporting plants by ship led to an unprecedented number of plant introductions to England, especially those intended for ornamental purposes (8–13). Decorative plants either of the indigenous, old-fashioned varieties or exotic new species were now widely available and visible everywhere – in vast public garden beds or small cottage plots; in pots or cut arrangements in the homes and on the window sills of the middle class and the well-to-do; in theaters, meeting halls, and fashionable shops; in churches for weddings, funerals, and holidays; in the boutonnieres of dandies and at the wrists, bosoms, and in the hair of ladies; for sale on the streets in flower carts and stalls; and in the shops of the burgeoning florist trade.