An interesting factoid

Carolus Linnaeus, the 18th century Swede who - building on the work of John Ray and his concept of the "species" - gave us the beginnings of our modern system of biological classificaion, got his start studying the sexual organs of plants. His classification scheme was founded in comparative studies of the size, shape, and numbers of pistils and stamens in flowering plants. According to Daniel Boorstein's The Discoverers, Linnaeus was one of the more controversial researchers in the modest times of the mid-1700s, something of a Freud for the botanical world. (I think of him as more of a Kinsey.)