Home / Activities / March 22, 2018

Flora Unveiled: The Discovery and Denial of Sex in Plants

  • Lee and Lincoln Taiz present their impressive, highly readable, and beautifully illustrated book
  • Through a broad synthesis of fields from botany to religion Lee and Lincoln show how a longstanding gender bias that all plants are female prevented the discovery of two sexes in plants until the late 17th century
  • Even after that discovery it remained controversial for another 150 years
  • The story told in Flora Unveiled has been described as a remarkable example of how strongly cultural biases can influence our perceptions, impede scientific advances, and delay acceptance of new discoveries