Plant culture: thirteen seasonal pieces. May--two pictures of springtime.

Abstract

In May, flowering time, nature animates the northern world. Botticelli’s Primavera expresses this by reference to Lucretius’ ancient poetic description of the procession of the spring months, and by connecting earthly love and procreation to the divine spirit of love. Our modern Primavera II is inspired by progress in understanding the genetic mechanisms controlling flowering time in Arabidopsis. It rejoices in the repressions, activations, reinforcements and redundancies of molecular biology, a language of power and control that dominates today’s understanding of nature. It illustrates a reductionism that would have delighted Lucretius. Titus Lucretius Carus was a citizen of Rome, a materialist who championed the common sense philosophy of Epicurus, which in turn traces back to the atomist Democritus. We can recognize in Lucretius the symptoms of an early scientist; but he was also a poet. And his poetic style did much to popularize the scientific way of thinking, both on publication of his ideas as ‘De Rerum Natura’ in about 50 BC, and on their translation into English as ‘On the Nature of Things’ at the birth of the modern age of science. Lucretius was a fierce enemy of religion, believing that the idea that events on earth were to be attributed to the (unfathomable) actions of gods was a tyranny over the minds of men. Be an atomist, be rational, and be free, he seems to say. But, as part of his poetic style, he still invoked the gods. They allowed him to express his awe at nature; his wonder, for instance, at the coming of spring: Spring comes, and Venus, and Venus’ winged courier Cupid runs in front. And all along the path that they will tread dame Flora carpets the trail of Zephyr with a wealth of blossoms exquisite in hue and fragrance. As well as expressing wonder and awe, Lucretius was keen to promote the idea that the regularity and sequence of events in spring (and during the rest of the year) show a universe bound by physical laws. We should not suppose, he exhorted, that the sun and moon ‘run their yearly races between heaven and earth of their own free will with the amiable intention of promoting the growth of crops and animals, or that they are rolled round in furtherance of some divine plan’. It is, therefore, even more striking that it was the poetic aspect to Lucretius’ message that formed the basis for one