The Temple of Flora: Robert John Thornton’s grand tribute to Linnaeus and nature’s night queen

January 21, 1837

Dearest reader,

On this day, we mark the passing of Robert John Thornton — English physician, poet of plants, and undeterred dreamer of “The Temple of Flora.”

Thornton adored Carl Linnaeus with a devotion bordering on reverence; one might even say he was Linnaeus’s most ardent disciple. In fact, when he published his magnum opus, he dedicated it to his hero, declaring that his goal was to create “the very best illustrated botanical book ever made.”

Modesty was not among his blossoms, but vision most certainly was.

Imagine it: seventy grand plates of exotic plants, each standing regally in its native landscape, arranged according to the sacred order of Linnaeus’s classification.

This was not meant to be a dry scientific catalogue — no, Thornton envisioned a living cathedral of beauty and order, where art and botany held hands beneath the same dome of wonder. Alas, even the loftiest gardens must yield to earthly limitations.

After commissioning some of the finest artists and engravers of his era, Thornton was forced to stop at twenty-eight plates — the funding wilted before the flowering was finished.

Yet, dear reader, what remains of “The Temple of Flora” is nothing short of sublime. Even in its unfinished form, the work stands as one of the most exquisite collections of botanical art ever produced. Thornton’s combination of dramatic landscapes, lush detail, and painterly precision lifts each plant beyond the page and into legend.

Of all the plates, none stirs the imagination quite like his engraving of the night-blooming cereus — “The Queen of the Night.”

The bloom commands nearly the entire page, luminous against a shadowed sky where the ruins of a lonely castle brood in the distance. It is a scene of fleeting grandeur, much like the flower itself: ephemeral, intoxicating, destined to vanish by dawn.

The night-blooming cereus, native to Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, remains as captivating today as in Thornton’s time. It can rise ten feet tall, and those who coax it to bloom must wait — patiently, faithfully — for five years or more.

At first, only a blossom or two will appear, but when they do, their seven-inch perfume-laden flowers make every year of tending worthwhile.

Is it not a fitting metaphor for Thornton himself — the dreamer who poured years into a single night’s bloom of brilliance?

So, as we remember Robert John Thornton, perhaps we should ask ourselves: what grand, impossible beauty do we dare to plant, even knowing it may never fully come to fruition?

For in gardens, as in art, ambition is itself a kind of immortality.