Byways of Chocolate and Flowers

I have no doubt that sales of chocolates and flowers increase in the U.S. before every Valentine's Day.  Hardly anyone shopping on Feb. 12th & 13th would know, however, that chocolate and flowers intersect at a point in history a little over three centuries ago. That conjunction tells a story involving, of all things, British imperialism, science, and religion.

As with many such incidents in the byways of history, the connecting character in the story is now one of the little-known figures of history.  His name is Hans Sloane (1660-1753), and he is the person who introduced milk-chocolate to the United Kingdom.  A larger story begins to emerge when we find out that Sloane had a collection of 71,000 objects that, after his demise, became the basis for the British Museum in London. Flowers enter the picture as we learn that among those objects were 800 new species of plants from around the world that he had collected.

What had brought that about?  Sloane's collecting was not just a personal mania.  He was part of a wave of collecting plants and animal specimens by the English during the 1600's and 1700's. That foundation for botanical and zoological studies rode the wave of British expansionism as the British Navy spread throughout the globe, establishing colonies, and securing trade in goods and slaves.  Plants -- particularly flowering tropical ones -- were among the cargo brought back to England.

It is the connections surrounding the milk-chocolate man Sloane that get us more specifically to matters involving flowers, science, and religion.  Sloane, with his vast collection of specimens, corresponded with the botanist John Ray (1627-1705), who  would come to publish a three-volume catalogue of over 16,00 plant species.

John Ray

Ray was able to accomplish such an astonishing feat because he developed an innovative system of classification, the key to which was concentrating on the seeds produced by flowers. Although modern biological classification has evolved beyond Ray's system, he established species as the basic unit.  Also, modern botany still employs Ray's major division of plants into monocotyledons (such as corn), which have a single leaf sprouting from the seed, and dicotyledons (such as lima beans), which have two leaves sprouting from the seed.

In the historical study of the relationship between science and religion, John Ray is best know for another book he wrote, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation.  That title dates Ray as being from an earlier era of science, in which scientists more freely mixed their scientific observations with their belief about God.  It is an approach no longer used by scientists today.

Nevertheless, virtually everybody feels that Nature's cacao plant and the chocolate derived from it were very smart inventions.  And countless people love flowers.  Hopefully, we have all been able at times to feel (as Ray did) a love for the marvelous intricacy of living beings, whether or not we depict it as being the wisdom of God.

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Have chocolate or flowers added anything to your spirit for living?  How?

(The drawing of John Ray is in the Public Domain

 because its copyright has expired.)