would have appreciated, when he rendered this into 
English as follows: ‘And as in diverse plants and trees 
there are two sexes, male and female, which is percepti- 
ble in laurels, palms, cypresses, oaks, holmes [i.e. holm- 
oaks], the daffodil [i.e. asphodel], mandrake, fern, the 
agaric [i.e. mushroom], birthwort, turpentine, penny- 
royal, peony, rose of the mount and many other such 
like, even so in this herb there is a male which beareth 
no flower at all, yet it is very copious of and abundant 
in seed. There is likewise in it a female, which hath great 
store and plenty of whitish flowers, serviceable to little 
or no purposes, nor doth it carry in it seed of any worth 
at all, at least comparable to that of the male. It hath 
also a larger leaf and much softer than that of the male, 
nor doth it altogether grow to so great a height’. The 
seed-bearing hemp called ‘male’ here is, of course, the 
female plant and the sterile hemp here called ‘female’ is 
really the male. 
Most pre- Linnaean botanical authors, except Ray and 
Morison, applied the terms mas (male) and foemina (fe- 
male) in the same metaphorical way as Rabelais, without 
any concept of true sexuality in plants comparable to that 
of animals. Thus, of two kinds, usually distinct species, 
the more robust or more vigorous or more useful one, 
especially if having larger leaves or harder wood, was 
designated ‘male’ and the inferior one ‘female’. Hence, 
the names Cannabis sativa and C. mas, as used by Dale- 
champs, Dodoens and C. Bauhin, refer to female indi- 
viduals of hemp; and the names C. erratica, C. foemina 
and C. sterilis refer to male individuals. The name Can- 
nabis sativa, which Linnaeus used as a specific name 
covering both sexes, applied originally only to female 
individuals. This kind of usage died slowly. As late as 
1884, Saint-Lager noted, in his erudite ‘Remarques his- 
toriques sur les mots ‘‘plantes mfles’’ et ‘‘plantes fe- 
[2e7 | 
