Daffodil
‘Daffodowndillies’ writes Thomas Hill ‘is a timely flower good for shew.’ Gerard in his Herbal tells us that ‘Theocritus affirmeth the daffodils to grow in meadowes … he writeth that the fair lady Europa, entering with her nymphs into the meadowes, did gather the sweet smelling daffodils, in these verses which we may English thus:
But when the girles here come into,
The meadowes flouring all in sight,
That wench with these, this wench with those,
Trim floures, themselves did all delight;
She with the Narcisse good in scent,
And she with Hyacynths content.’
Daffodil bulbs were used by Galen, surgeon of the school of gladiators, to glue together great wounds and gashes; the bulbs were carried for a similar purpose in the back-packs of Roman soldiers. Perhaps this is how they first came to this country. The name daffodil, d’asphodel, is a confusion with the asphodel. They were also called Lent lily.
Daffodils ‘come before the swallows dare and take the winds of March with beauty’. When I read these words they are tinged with sadness, for the seasonal nature of daffodils has been destroyed by horticulturists who nowadays force them well before Christmas. One of the joys our technological civilisation has lost is the excitement with which seasonal flowers and fruits were welcomed; the first daffodil, strawberry or cherry are now things of the past, along with the precious moment of their arrival. Even the tangerine – now a satsuma or clementine – appears de-pipped months before Christmas. I expect one day to see daffodils for sale in Berwick Street market in August, as plentiful as strawberries at Christmas. Even the humble apple has succumbed. Tough green waxy specimens have eradicated the varieties of my childhood, the pink-fleshed scented August pearmains, the laxtons and russets; only the cox seems to have survived the onslaught. Perhaps my nostalgia is out of place – now daffodils are plentiful; and mushrooms, once a luxury, are ladled out by the pound. Avocados and mangoes are commonplace. But the daffodil, if only the daffodil could come with spring again, I would eat strawberries with my Christmas pudding.
Hyacinth
The bluebell, Hyacinthus nonscriptus, is the hyacinth of the ancients, the flower of grief and mourning. Hyacinth, son of the king of Sparta, whose sparkling blue eyes and jet black hair enflamed Phoebus Apollo, whipped Zephyrus into a frenzy of desire; but the boy loved the sun god best, causing the wild west wind to seek a terrible revenge. One day as Hyacinth and Apollo were playing quoits Zephyrus caught a quoit in a whirlwind and smashed the boy’s beautiful face, killing him. Grief-stricken, Apollo raised the purple flower from the drops of blood on which he traced the letters ai ai, so his anguish would forever echo through the spring.
Whenever you walk in a sunny bluebell wood, remember it is the heart of a passionate love. It is dangerous to kiss there, as the wind sighing in the branches will want to blow you and the boy apart. Your love may wilt and die as quickly as the flowers you pick, your hands will be stained with blood.
So leave the wood in peace, empty-handed. For the blue-eyed flower with its heavy fragrance only belongs to the sun.
And remember that Ovid said that Sparta was not ashamed of having produced Hyacinth, for he is honoured there to this very day, and every year the Hyacinthian games are celebrated with festive displays, in accordance with ancient usage.
Rosemary
Rosemary – Ros marinus, sea dew – has proved quite hardy here. My next-door neighbour has an ancient gnarled specimen – all the garden books are emphatic it hates the wind, but a more windy and exposed spot you could not find. Thomas More, who loved it, wrote, ‘As for Rosemarie, I let it run all over my garden walls, not because bees love it but because it is the herb sacred to remembrance and therefore to friendship, whence a sprig of it hath a dumb language.’
The herb was part of Ophelia’s bouquet: ‘here’s rosemary for remembrance.’ Gilded and tied with ribbons it was carried at weddings; also, a sprig of it was placed in the hands of the dead. Legend has it that originally its flowers were white until the day the Virgin Mary laid out her robe to dry on some bushes, colouring them a heavenly blue.
‘Where rosemary flourishes women rule’: years ago on the island of Patmos, the old woman on whose roof I was sleeping washed my clothes for me, and scented them with wild rosemary from the hillside. In ancient Greece young men wore garlands of rosemary in their hair to stimulate the mind; perhaps the gathering of the Symposium was scented with it.
Narcissus
Narcissus is derived not from the name of the young man who met his death vainly trying to embrace his reflection in crystal water, but from the Greek narkao (to benumb); though of course Narcissus, benumbed by his own beauty, fell to his death embracing his shadow. Pliny says ‘Narce Narcissum dictum non a fabuloso puero,’ named Narcissus from narké, not from the fabled boy. Socrates called the plant ‘crown of the infernal gods’ because the bulbs, if eaten, numbed the nervous system. Perhaps Roman soldiers carried it for this reason (rather than for its healing properties) as the American soldiers smoked marijuana in Vietnam.
Pansy
Viola tricolor, heartsease, tickle-my-fancy, love-in-idleness, or herb trinity. The juice of it on sleeping eyelids will make a man or woman dote upon the next live creature they see, if you would have midsummer’s dreams. A strong tea made of the leaves will cure a broken heart; for our pansy is strongly aphrodisiac, its name, pensée, I think of you. If it leads you astray, don’t worry: the herbal says it cures the clap; for ‘it is a Saturnine plant of a cold slimy viscous nature … an excellent cure for venereal disorder’.
In the old days pansies were virgin white, until Cupid fired his arrow and turned them the colours of the rainbow. Of one thing you must beware: picking a pansy in the first light of dawn, particularly if it is spotted with dew, will surely bring the death of a loved one.
Was the pansy pinned to us, its velvety nineteenth century showiness the texture of Oscar’s flamboyant and floppy clothes? As Ficino says, the gardens of Adonis are cultivated for the sake of flowers not fruits – now what about those fruits? Pansies, before you smile, are also the flower of the Trinity.
Celandine
Messenger of the swallow, celandine is the subject of one of the most complicated herbal remedies:
Take gallingall, cloves, cubibs, ginger, mellilote, cardamonia, maces, nutmegs, one dram. Of the juice of salandine, 8 drams. Mingle all these made in powder with the said juice and a pint of acquavit, and three pints of white wine. Put it into a stillitory of glass and the next day still it with an easy fire. This water is an excellent virtue against consumption or any other disease that proceeds from rheume, choler or fleagme.
If that seems complex, the lore of the arum is more so – Gerard informs us that:
Beares after they have lien in their dens forty days without any manner of sustenance, but what they get from licking and sucking their own feet, doe as soone as they come forth eat the herb cuckoo pint. Through the windie nature thereof the hungry gut is opened.
But the plant has more practical uses than causing bears to fart. It was used to starch the ruffs that Titian’s dark young men wear – a beauty bought at the expense of the laundresses’ hands, which this most pure white starch chappeth, blistereth and maketh rough and rugged and withal smarting.
Violets
Gerard says of violets – that they:
Stirre up a man to that which is comely and honest; for flowres through their beauty, variety of colour, and exquisite forme, do bring to a liberal and gentle manly minde, the remembrance of honesty, comlinesse and all kinds of virtues, because it would be an unseemly and filthy thing (as a certain wise man sayeth) for him that look upon and handle faire and beautiful things to have his mind not faire, but filthy and deformed.
Culpeper adds, ‘They are a fine pleasing plant of Venus, of a mild nature, no way harmful.’ Pindar called Athens ‘violet crowned’; garlands of violets were worn on all festive occasions, particularly on the feast of Demeter, when young men were crowned with them. In German it is still known as ‘boy’s herb’. Goethe always carried violet seeds on his country walks and scattered them.
Lily of the Valley
Lily of the valley was often carried in bouquets: something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue – the lily of constancy, Mary’s tears, a sign of the second coming, often called ‘ladder-to-heaven’. When Mary wept at the foot of the cross her tears turned into this pure white flower of humility.
The medicinal property of the Virgin’s tears was considered so strong in the Middle Ages that infusions made from them were kept in gold and silver vessels, like the jewelled reliquaries that held fragments of the True Cross. Distilled in wine and ministered to the dumb it would restore speech and restore memory, clear as the bells of the flower.
Sempervivums
In 1948 my father was posted as Commanding Officer to RAF Abingdon, near Oxford. The desolate married quarters were painted in khaki and black camouflage, the garden an uneven lawn bounded by a barbed wire fence, its only ornament a concrete ‘rockery’, made from an old air-raid shelter.
I returned from the watermill somewhere beyond the pub called The Rose Revived clutching a bunch of houseleeks that had been given to me by the man who lived there. They grew on his stone roof, scorched red by the wind and sun, with star-shaped rose-coloured flowers and perfectly formed miniature offshoots – each plant covered by a spider’s web which trapped the dew. These flowers seemed alien exotics in his rich and vivid waterside garden, a maze of scarlet runners and blue-green cabbages over which white butterflies floated. I followed the man through this luxuriant jungle to the pig pens, keeping a cautious distance from his pet swan, which had a broken wing and hissed if I got too near (a swan, I was told, could break a man’s arm, so its disability gave me some satisfaction).
The man was restoring the tumbledown buildings. He was carving a mantelpiece from a huge baulk of oak. The elder, and giant cow parsley, flag irises and ancient willows seemed poised to burst through the thick stone walls and broken windows to reclaim the muddy flagstones – an uneasy balance was struck. To keep rampant nature at bay the man carried a gun, firing at the crows in the elm trees, occasionally bringing one clattering down through the branches whilst its comrades flew higher and higher in the summer afternoon, protesting angrily.
The man, handsome and self-assured, wore an old corduroy jacket with a scarlet neckerchief knotted like a cowboy’s. He smoked a pipe and walked slowly and deliberately with a limp from an old wound, which made him lean dangerously and upset my equilibrium as I walked beside him. He didn’t say much. He hooked the sempervivums off the roof with his stick and presented them to me.
I carefully repeated the name sempervivums all the way home to Abingdon – where I planted my tongue-twisting prizes, proudly showing them off to my friends, who were not the least interested in the plants but studiously learnt their name like a litany: SEM PER VIV UM.
The houseleek under the sign of Jupiter, ‘the Thunderer’, protects whoever grows it against storms and lightning; its effect is so powerful that the Emperor Charlemagne ordered it grown on the roof of every home. To this day you will find it grown in the same way, surviving drought and frost, ever and always living.
Forget-me-not
Egyptian seers placed the flowers of forget-me-not on the eyes of initiates to bring dreams; the flower was sacred to Thoth, god of wisdom.
There are many stories about the name. As a child I often wondered why ‘forget-me-not’? Surely it is because this beautiful blue flower is so retiring you could easily miss it.