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Who was the "ungrateful cuckoo"?

December 5, 2003

killerPlants Tendrils: ~~1~~2~~3~~4~~5~~

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Indian weed is an Old World member of the Asteraceae. The yellow inflorescences are subtended by involucral bracts covered with sticky glandular trichomes. Indian weed grows along roadsides, in fields, dry clearings, and open hillsides. It frequently comes up in abundance after a fire or when soils have been disturbed. It has been described as obnoxious. Linnaeus named it Sigesbeckia orientalis, the name was not formally published until 1753.

Johann Georg Siegesbeck was a German botanist and the director of the Medical Garden in St. Petersburg, Russia. He began writing to Linnaeus in 1735. He wrote at least four letters over 17 months. But, when he read Linnaeus's method of classifying plants based on the floral parts, especially the
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"lewd implication" that stamens were male and the pistil female and that the male stamens out-numbered the single female, well, the promiscuity of it all--his moral sensibilities were outraged.

Siegesbeck proceeded to openly mock Linnaeus to the point where Linnaeus could not even hire house servants. He was the laughing stock of Uppsala. Even Pope Clemens XIII banned Linnaeus's work, considering it immoral, lascivious, and calling for his writing to be burned.

The hostility escalated in the 1740s when Linnaeus found a packet of fruits of Klibbfrö, the Swedish name for Indian weed at the University's Botanical Garden in Uppsala. Apparently, he had already labeled it Sigesbeckia orientalis, but in anger, he added "Cuculus ingratus", ungrateful cuckoo. The cuckoo is a brood-parasite, laying her egg in another bird's nest; the hatchling benefits off the work of other birds and implying Siegesbeck benefited off of other botanists.

Through a series of unfortunate circumstances, the packet of seeds ended up in St. Petersburg and in the hands of Siegesbeck. He planted the seeds and what grew, but the weed. This incident ended the exchange of plant material between Sweden and Russia.

Siegesbeck's only son committed suicide. Linnaeus took this as a divine punishment. But by insulting the German botanist, Linnaeus succeeded in perpetuating his family name.

The Eurobadalla Shire Council, New South Wales has posted a photograph of Indian weed, Sigesbeckia orientalis. To view the photograph, click on the link:

http://www.esc.nsw.gov.au/Weeds/Images/herbs/Sigesbeckia%20orientalis3.jpg

(Compiled from: w3 TROPICOS, Missouri Botanical Garden; "Linnaean Correspondence", The International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and "Odium Botanicorum. The Polemics between Carl Linnaeus and Johann Georg Siegesbeck" (Advance Abstract) Ann-Mari Jönsson, Germania-Latina.)

killerPlants Tendrils: ~~1~~2~~3~~4~~5~~

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