Flowers And Flower-Gardens Part 39

Some authors suppose the Red Martagon Lily to be the poetical Hyacinth of the ancients, but this is evidently a mistaken opinion, as the azure blue color alone would decide and Pliny describes the Hyacinth as having a sword gra.s.s and the smell of the grape flower, which agrees with the Hyacinth, but not with the Martagon. Again, Homer mentions it with fragrant flowers of the same season of the Hyacinth. The poets also notice the hyacinth under different colours, and every body knows that the hyacinth flowers with sapphire colored purple, crimson, flesh and white bells, but a blue martagon will be sought for in vain. _Phillips'

Flora Historica_.

A doubt hangs over the poetical history of the modern, as well as of the ancient flower, owing to the appellation _Harebell_ being, indiscriminately applied both to _Scilla_ wild Hyacinth, and also to _Campanula rotundifolia, Blue Bell_. Though the Southern bards have occasionally misapplied the word _Harebell_ it will facilitate our understanding which flower is meant if we bear in mind as a general rule that that name is applied differently in various parts of the island, thus the Harebell of Scottish writers is the _Campanula_, and the Bluebell, so celebrated in Scottish song, is the wild Hyacinth or _Scilla_ while in England the same names are used conversely, the _Campanula_ being the Bluebell and the wild Hyacinth the Harebell. _Eden Warwick_.

The Hyacinth of the ancient fabulists appears to have been the corn-flag, (_Gladiolus communis_ of botanists) but the name was applied vaguely and had been early applied to the great larkspur (Delphinium Ajacis) on account of the similar spots on the petals, supposed to represent the Greek exclamation of grief _Ai Ai_, and to the hyacinth of modern times.

Our wild hyacinth, which contributes so much to the beauty of our woodland scenery during the spring, may be regarded as a transition species between scilla and hyacinthus, the form and drooping habit of its flower connecting it with the latter, while the six pieces that form the two outer circles, being separate to the base, give it the technical character of the former. It is still called _Hyacinthus non-scriptus_--but as the true hyacinth equally wants the inscription, the name is singularly inappropriate. The botanical name of the hyacinth is _Hyacinthus orientalis_ which applies equally to all the varieties of colour, size and fulness.--_W. Hinks_.

[070] Old Gerard calls it Blew Harebel or English _Jacint_, from the French _Jacinthe_.

[071] Inhabitants of the Island of Chios

[072] Supposed by some to be Delphinium Ajacis or Larkspur. But no one can discover any letters on the Larkspur.

[073] Some _savants_ say that it was not the _sunflower_ into which the lovelorn la.s.s was transformed, but the _Heliotrope_ with its sweet odour of vanilla. Heliotrope signifies _I turn towards the sun_. It could not have been the sun flower, according to some authors because that came from Peru and Peru was not known to Ovid. But it is difficult to settle this grave question. As all flowers turn towards the sun, we cannot fix on any one that is particularly ent.i.tled to notice on that account.

[074] Zephyrus.

[075] "A remarkably intelligent young botanist of our acquaintance a.s.serts it as his firm conviction that many a young lady who would shrink from being kissed under the mistletoe would not have the same objection to that ceremony if performed _under the rose_."--_Punch_.

[076] Mary Howitt mentions that amongst the private cultivators of roses in the neighbourhood of London, the well-known publisher Mr. Henry S.

Bohn is particularly distinguished. In his garden at Twickenham one thousand varieties of the rose are brought to great perfection. He gives a sort of floral fete to his friends in the height of the rose season.

[077] The learned dry the flower of the Forget me not and flatten it down in their herbals, and call it, _Myosotis Scorpioides--Scorpion shaped mouse's ear_! They have been reproached for this by a brother savant, Charles Nodier, who was not a learned man only but a man of wit and sense.--_Alphonse Karr_.

[078] The Abbe Molina in his History of Chili mentions a species of basil which he calls _ocymum salinum_: he says it resembles the common basil, except that the stalk is round and jointed; and that though it grows sixty miles from the sea, yet every morning it is covered with saline globules, which are hard and splendid, appearing at a distance like dew; and that each plant furnishes about an ounce of fine salt every day, which the peasants collect and use as common salt, but esteem it superior in flavour.--_Notes to Darwin's Loves of the Plants_.

[079] The Dutch are a strange people and of the most heterogeneous composition. They have an odd mixture in their nature of the coldest utilitarianism and the most extravagant romance. A curious ill.u.s.tration of this is furnished in their tulipomania, in which there was a struggle between the love of the substantial and the love of the beautiful. One of their authors enumerates the following articles as equivalent in money value to the price of one tulip root--"two lasts of wheat--four lasts of rye--four fat oxen--eight fat swine--twelve fat sheep--two hogsheads of wine--four tons of b.u.t.ter--one thousand pounds of cheese--a complete bed--a suit of clothes--and a silver drinking cup."

[080] _Maun_, must

[081] _Stoure_, dust

[082] _Weet_, wetness, rain

[083] _Glinted_, peeped

[084] _Wa's_, walls.

[085] _Bield_, shelter

[086] _Histie_, dry

[087] _Stibble field_, a field covered with stubble--the stalks of corn left by the reaper.

[088] _The origin of the Daisy_--When Christ was three years old his mother wished to twine him a birthday wreath. But as no flower was growing out of doors on Christmas eve, not in all the promised land, and as no made up flowers were to be bought, Mary resolved to prepare a flower herself. To this end she took a piece of bright yellow silk which had come down to her from David, and ran into the same, thick threads of white silk, thread by thread, and while thus engaged, she p.r.i.c.ked her finger with the needle, and the pure blood stained some of the threads with crimson, whereat the little child was much affected. But when the winter was past and the rains were come and gone, and when spring came to strew the earth with flowers, and the fig tree began to put forth her green figs and the vine her buds, and when the voice or the turtle was heard in the land, then came Christ and took the tender plant with its single stem and egg shaped leaves and the flower with its golden centre and rays of white and red, and planted it in the vale of Nazareth. Then, taking up the cup of gold which had been presented to him by the wise men of the East, he filled it at a neighbouring fountain, and watered the flower and breathed upon it. And the plant grew and became the most perfect of plants, and it flowers in every meadow, when the snow disappears, and is itself the snow of spring, delighting the young heart and enticing the old men from the village to the fields. From then until now this flower has continued to bloom and although it may be plucked a hundred times, again it blossoms--_Colshorn's Deutsche Mythologie furs Deutsche Volk_.

[089] The Gorse is a low bush with p.r.i.c.kly leaves growing like a juniper. The contrast of its very brilliant yellow pea shaped blossoms with the dark green of its leaves is very beautiful. It grows in hedges and on commons and is thought rather a plebeian affair. I think it would make quite an addition to our garden shrubbery. Possibly it might make as much sensation with us (Americans) as our mullein does in foreign green-houses,--_Mrs. Stowe_.

[090] George Town.

[091] The hill trumpeter.

[092] Nutmeg and Clove plantations.

[093] Leigh Hunt, in the dedication of his _Stories in Verse_ to the Duke of Devonshire speaks of his Grace as "the adorner of the country with beautiful gardens, and with the far-fetched botany of other climates; one of whom it may be said without exaggeration and even without a metaphor, that his footsteps may be traced in flowers."

[094] The following account of a newly discovered flower may be interesting to my readers. "It is about the size of a walnut, perfectly white, with fine leaves, resembling very much the wax plant. Upon the blooming of the flower, in the cup formed by the leaves, is the exact image of a dove lying on its back with its wings extended. The peak of the bill and the eyes are plainly to be seen and a small leaf before the flower arrives at maturity forms the outspread tail. The leaf can be raised or shut down with the finger without breaking or apparently injuring it until the flower reaches its bloom, when it drops,"--_Panama Star_.

[095] Signifying the _dew of the sea_. The rosemary grows best near the sea-sh.o.r.e, and when the wind is off the land it delights the home-returning voyager with its familiar fragrance.

[096] Perhaps it is not known to _all_ my readers that some flowers not only brighten the earth by day with their lovely faces, but emit light at dusk. In a note to Darwin's _Loves of the Plants_ it is stated that the daughter of Linnaeus first observed the Nasturtium to throw out flashes of light in the morning before sunrise, and also during the evening twilight, but not after total darkness came on. The philosophers considered these flashes to be electric. Mr. Haggren, Professor of Natural History, perceived one evening a faint flash of light repeatedly darted from a marigold. The flash was afterwards often seen by him on the same flower two or three times, in quick succession, but more commonly at intervals of some minutes. The light has been observed also on the orange, the lily, the monks hood, the yellow goats beard and the sun flower. This effect has sometimes been so striking that the flowers have looked as if they were illuminated for a holiday.

Lady Blessington has a fanciful allusion to this flower light. "Some flowers," she says, "absorb the rays of the sun so strongly that in the evening they yield slight phosphoric flashes, may we not compare the minds of poets to those flowers which imbibing light emit it again in a different form and aspect?"

[097] The Shan and other Poems

[098] My Hindu friend is not answerable for the following notes.

[099]

And infants winged, who mirthful throw Shafts rose-tipped from nectareous bow.

Kam Deva, the Cupid of the Hindu Mythology, is thus represented. His bow is of the sugar cane, his string is formed of wild bees, and his arrows are tipped with the rose.--_Tales of the Forest_.

[100] In 1811 this plant was subjected to a regular set of experiments by Dr. G. Playfair, who, with many of his brethren, bears ample testimony of its efficacy in leprosy, lues, tenia, herpes, dropsy, rheumatism, hectic and intermittent fever. The powdered bark is given in doses of 5-6 grains twice a day.--_Dr. Voight's Hortus Suburba.n.u.s Calcuttensis_.

[101] It is perhaps of the Flax tribe. Mr. Piddington gives it the Sanscrit name of _Atasi_ and the Botanical name _Linum usitatissimum_.

[102] Roxburgh calls it "intensely fragrant."

[103] Sometimes employed by robbers to deprive their victims of the power of resistance. In a strong dose it is poison.

[104] It is said to be used by the Chinese to blacken their eyebrows and their shoes.

[105] _Mirabilis jalapa_, or Marvel of Peru, is called by the country people in England _the four o'clock flower_, from its opening regularly at that time. There is a species of broom in America which is called the American clock, because it exhibits its golden flowers every morning at eleven, is fully open by one and closes again at two.

[106] Marvell died in 1678; Linnaeus died just a hundred years later.

[107] This poem (_The Sugar Cane_) when read in ma.n.u.script at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, had made all the a.s.sembled wits burst into a laugh, when after much blank-verse pomp the poet began a paragraph thus.--

"Now, Muse, let's sing of rats."

And what increased the ridicule was, that one of the company who slyly overlooked the reader, perceived that the word had been originally _mice_ and had been altered to _rats_ as more dignified.--_Boswell's Life of Johnson_.

[108] Hazlitt has a pleasant essay on a garden _Sun-dial_, from which I take the following pa.s.sage:--

_Horas non numero nisi serenas_--is the motto of a sun dial near Venice.

There is a softness and a harmony in the words and in the thought unparalleled. Of all conceits it is surely the most cla.s.sical. "I count only the hours that are serene." What a bland and care-dispelling feeling! How the shadows seem to fade on the dial plate as the sky looms, and time presents only a blank unless as its progress is marked by what is joyous, and all that is not happy sinks into oblivion! What a fine lesson is conveyed to the mind--to take no note of time but by its benefits, to watch only for the smiles and neglect the frowns of fate, to compose our lives of bright and gentle moments, turning always to the sunny side of things, and letting the rest slip from our imaginations, unheeded or forgotten! How different from the common art of self tormenting! For myself, as I rode along the Brenta, while the sun shone hot upon its sluggish, slimy waves, my sensations were far from comfortable, but the reading this inscription on the side of a glaring wall in an instant restored me to myself, and still, whenever I think of or repeat it, it has the power of wafting me into the region of pure and blissful abstraction.