Given that today marks the birthday of one of the most important naturalists in world history, Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778, also know as Carl von Linné or Carolus Linnaeus), the so-called “Pliny of the North”, “Flower King”, “Second Adam”, and perhaps most objectively “Father of Taxonomy”, I thought if would feature his namesake favorite flower, Linnaea borealis, more commonly known as the twinflower. I’ve been searching for this plant for my own garden for some time, but it has remained elusive. Linnaeus didn’t discover this rather humble plant, a native of the northern regions of his ancestral Sweden, but almost as soon as he gained fame and titles for his work he adopted it as his personal emblem. His constant commemoration, in Sweden and elsewhere, often encompasses the twinflower–first among all of the other specimens he classified in his groundbreaking system of binomial nomenclature.
Bust of Linnaeus with twinflowers, Dictionnaire pittoresque d’histoire naturelle et des phénomènes de la nature (1833-1839); Portraits of Linnaeus, twinflowers in hand, by Martin Hoffman (Wellcome Library) and Mrs. Anderson (1858; Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew).
In tribute to Linnaeus, the linnaea borealis is the national flower of Sweden, and so it can be found everywhere: on fabrics, pottery, calendars, and cocktail napkins. All of those things are available over here too, and the plants apparently, but I just can’t find one. I know they will grow here in Massachusetts, I’ve picked out a lovely little place among the woodland plants in the back of my garden, but it remains linnaea-less. The long Memorial Day weekend is always a big nursery/gardening time for me, so I’ll try, try again, but I don’t have much hope: I might have to be satisfied with material substitutes. Anyway, on this appropriately beautiful May day, a toast to Carl Linnaeus, without whom we would all be wandering around in a very chaotic world of nature, and to his beloved twinflower!
ASDA photograph of twinflowers by Allison Brown; teaching slide from the Annals of Botany, “Limited mate availability decreases reproductive success of fragmented populations of Linnaea borealis, a rare, clonal self–incompatible plant” (maybe this explains my problem! Limited mate availability! Self-incompatible!); felted twinflowers on Art that‘s Felt; a portfolio of Linnaea Borealis porcelain from Hackefors and Svaneholm.
