Whitman's Flowers

Over the growing sugar, over the yellow-flower'd cotton plant

Over the western persimmon, over the long-leav'd corn, over the/ delicate blue-flower flax

Fetch stonecrop mixt with cedar and branches of lilac,

And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have for each/ other,

Calling my name from flower-beds, vines, tangled underbrush,/ Lighting on every moment of my life,

Many plants flower including ones we think wouldn’t. Corn, for instance, is a monoecious flowering fruit meaning they include both the male and female sex organs on the flower. Every other plant mentioned, except for the persimmon, is monoecious meaning they have male and female flowers on the same plant. I am unsure of Whitman’s botanical prowess but he most certainly knew that from flowers come the fruits of a season’s labor. The lines “over the yellow-flower’d cotton plant” and “over the/ delicate blue-flower flax,” are mentioned among a wide list of things Whitman sees as he travels across the land. Each of these things are extremely individualistic yet share similar properties, such as the “yellow-flower’d cotton plant” and the “blue flower flax.” These two flowers are mentioned together with the term flowers. One, the cotton, becomes a consumable product while the other is a pretty thing to look at by doing so Whitman creates equal significance between the two. One is not more important than the other simply because it can be used. And in that same line with the blue flax he places the fruit before the flower. Blending the senses of something that can be tasted and with something to see and smell. He takes these highly individualized creations of nature and spreads them throughout the world he sees, as flowers are in almost every corner of the world so is Whitman and so are we. It is in the lilac, perhaps a favored flower of the writer, that he celebrates what I as a reader did not expect to see. He celebrates science, “Hurrah for positive science! long live exact demonstration!/ Fetch stonecrop mixt with cedar and branches of lilac,” from this arises Whitman’s inner botanist. He sees the beauty in studying the every essence of the flower to come to a more in-depth understanding of it. Like poetry the scientist delves deep into the breast of nature to touch all knowledge that can be got and to see what comes from mixing flowers and trees or other such things. He celebrates science for its own goals of melding the high and the low and transmogrifying things of beauty into things of use, and things of use into things of beauty. Until we come to his lovers who call for him “from flower-beds.” These lovers being from indiscriminate beds of flowers are comingled and interwoven through their thoughts of him. He is the focal point of this natural scene. Whitman’s flowers.