Fairchild's Mule, or Plants are Cooler Than Your God

[thesummerqueen]

http://digitalbotanicgarden.blogspot.com...lmost.html

Thomas Fairchild (1667-1729) was a nurseryman from Hoxton who is credited with producing the world's first deliberate man-made hybrid plant, when in 1717 he crossed a carnation (Dianthis caryophyllus) with sweet William (D. barbatus) to produce a sterile hybrid with intermediate characteristics. He presented a pressed specimen to the Royal Society and you can see an image of what I assume is the same herbarium specimen here.

Being a devout church-goer and believer in divine creation, Fairchild was perturbed by what he had done, which carried a whiff of blasphemy about it, and perhaps to atone left a bequest to his parish church (St.Leonards in Hackney Road) for an annual sermon on the 'wonderful works of God' which is still delivered annually, at Whitsun, to the Worshipful Company of Gardeners, decked out in their ceremonial gowns, although the venue is now St.Giles, Cripplegate. You can read more about Fairchild here, where there is also a photograph of his gravestone.

Fairchild's experiment was a landmark in plant science, ushering in an era of controlled hybridisation between plant species that has resulted in many of the garden plants that we now grow - and also many important crops. 'Mule', incidentally, as a term for a sterile interspecific hybrid, still persists in animal breeding circles.

Incidentally, a topic Darwin ran into in his studies. I've got his books on botany in my kindle right now and will upload some juicy goodness for the plant nerds once I get through them.

From the link about Fairchild:

Thomas Fairchild presented his hybrid to the Royal Society and, although its significance was recognised, the principle was not widely taken up by horticulturalists until a century later. In Thomas Fairchild’s day grafting and cuttings were the means of propagation and even “Fairchild’s Mule,” the extraordinary hybrid that flowered twice in a year, was bred through cuttings. Hybrids existed, accidentally, before Thomas Fairchild – Shakespeare makes reference to the debate as to their natural or unnatural qualities in “The Winters’ Tale” – yet Thomas Fairchild was the first to recognise the sexes of plants and cross-pollinate between species manually. Prefiguring the modern anxiety about genetic engineering, Thomas Fairchild’s bequest for the Vegetable Sermons was an expression of his own humility in the face of what he saw as the works of God’s creation.

I read about Fairchild in a great book called The Brother Gardeners but it didn't really touch on how many advances in botany/horticulture did as much to stir up disbelief as Darwin did.