LIFE CYCLES 



The Other 

 Kinsey Report 



Alfred C. Kinsey 's scientific interests went well beyond sex. 



By Peter Del Tredici 



ibJe Wild 



m'ca 



Alfred C. Kinsey, the sex doctor, 

 died fifty years ago this August. 

 The occasion offers the chance 

 to reconsider a figure whose interests 

 ranged over a great deal more than the 

 varieties of human sexual behavior. 

 Kinsey began his career as an ento- 

 mologist, but he was also passionate 

 about plants. In fact, he collaborated 

 with Merritt L. Fernald, a prominent 

 professor of botany at Harvard Uni- 

 versity, to produce the classic Edible Wild 

 Plants of Eastern North America. That 

 book, published in 1943, still stands 

 among the best of its kind for the num- 

 ber of species it covers, the accuracy of 

 its descriptions, and the practicality of 

 its recommendations for harvesting and 

 preparing wild foods. 



When I purchased my first copy of 

 Edible Wild Plants in the early 1970s, at 

 the start of my own botanical career, I 



Merritt Fernald, Kinsey's botanical 

 collaborator, circa 1940 



had no idea that its author was the 

 Alfred Kinsey of the famous Kinsey re- 

 ports. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male 

 (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Hu- 

 man Female (1953), each based on in- 

 terviews with thousands of Americans, 

 gained notoriety because they depict- 

 ed a populace more sexually experi- 

 enced and willing to experiment than 

 the prevailing culture of the time cared 

 to acknowledge. The two books 

 sparked considerable controversy and 

 public debate, made Kinsey a celebri- 

 ty, established the field of sexology, and 

 have been credited with launching the 

 sexual revolution of the 1960s. But 

 even after I belatedly made the con- 

 nection between botanical manual and 

 sexual expose, I never quite figured out 

 how Kinsey, the famous sex doctor, and 

 Fernald, the famous botanist — strange 

 bedfellows if ever there were any — 

 came to be linked through such a seem- 

 ingly mundane subject as edible plants. 



My question lay dormant for near- 

 ly thirty years, until I saw the bi- 

 ographical movie Kinsey in December 

 2004. In the opening scene, Professor 

 Kinsey (played by Liam Neeson) is 

 training his research assistants to record 

 people's sex histories by having the as- 

 sistants interview him. When an assis- 

 tant asks about his education, Kinsey 

 replies that he received his doctorate 

 from "the Bussey Institution of Harvard 

 University." The words made me sit 

 straight up in my seat, as the proverbial 

 light bulb turned on in my brain. The 



Edible Wild Plants of Eastern North America, 

 shown above in its original, 1 943 edition, was 

 the culmination of Alfred C. Kinsey's little- 

 known passion for botany. 



Bussey Institution, now defunct, had 

 been Harvard's agricultural college in 

 Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, adjacent 

 to the Arnold Arboretum where I work. 

 Fernald had been a professor there. 



Within a week of seeing Kinsey, I e- 

 mailed the archivist at Harvard's Gray 

 Herbarium to see whether there were 

 any files on Kinsey related to Edible 

 Wild Plants. The response came back 

 positive: the archives held two folders 

 of letters between Fernald and Kinsey, 

 plus some manuscript pages for the 

 book. I made an appointment to look 

 over the files the following week, and 

 I bought Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy's 

 biography of Kinsey to find out what 

 was already known about the history 

 of Edible Wild Plants. Next to nothing, 

 it turns out. That biography and oth- 

 ers mention the book only in passing. 



Kinsey was born in Hoboken, New 

 Jersey, on June 23, 1894. A sick- 

 ly child, he had a tumultuous relation- 

 ship with his father, who was sternly 

 religious. Kinsey developed a deep love 

 for the outdoors and found solace from 

 his difficulties in the study of the nat- 

 ural world. His interest in nature led 

 him to join the Boy Scouts and, at age 

 eighteen, he became one of the first 

 Americans to attain the rank of Eagle 

 Scout. He was particularly intrigued by 



22 



NATURAL Mis I OKY July/August 2006 



