The State gets irritated by such childish people, hunts them down and robs them of love, bemerds their dignity and honor, and puts signs on them […]

The ancestral states for these are a corolla tube that is equal to slightly longer than the lobes, is inflated on the lower surface, two fertile stamens with poricidal dehiscence, and an exserted style that is bent downward (Fig. 8).

1862, Charles Dickens, Somebody's Luggage

To make this mid-17th-century rat's nest of love affairs and sexual confusions intelligible for late-20th-century audiences is a job in itself.