“The pied wind flowers and the tulip tall,
  And narcissi, the fairest among them all,
  Who gaze on their eyes in the stream’s recess,
  Till they die at their own dear loveliness.”

The sycamore implies curiosity, from Zacchaeus, who climbed up into this tree to witness the triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem; and from time immemorial the violet has been the emblem of constancy:—­

  “Violet is for faithfulness,
  Which in me shall abide,
  Hoping likewise that from your heart
  You will not let it hide.”

In some cases flowers seem to have derived their symbolism from certain events associated with them.  Thus the periwinkle signifies “early recollections, or pleasures of memory,” in connection with which Rousseau tells us how, as Madame Warens and himself were proceeding to Charmattes, she was struck by the appearance of some of these blue flowers in the hedge, and exclaimed, “Here is the periwinkle still in flower.”

Thirty years afterwards the sight of the periwinkle in flower carried his memory back to this occasion, and he inadvertently cried, “Ah, there is the periwinkle.”  Incidents of the kind have originated many of the symbols found in plant language, and at the same time invested them with a peculiar historic interest.

Once more, plant language, it has been remarked, is one of those binding links which connects the sentiments and feelings of one country with another; although it may be, in other respects, these communities have little in common.  Thus, as Mr. Ingram remarks in the introduction to his “Flora Symbolica” (p. 12), “from the unlettered North American Indian to the highly polished Parisian; from the days of dawning among the mighty Asiatic races, whose very names are buried in oblivion, down to the present times, the symbolism of flowers is everywhere and in all ages discovered permeating all strata of society.  It has been, and still is, the habit of many peoples to name the different portions of the year after the most prominent changes of the vegetable kingdom.”

In the United States, the language of flowers is said to have more votaries than in any other part of the world, many works relative to which have been published in recent years.  Indeed, the subject will always be a popular one; for further details illustrative of which the reader would do well to consult Mr. H.G.  Adams’s useful work on the “Moral Language and Poetry of Flowers,” not to mention the constant allusions scattered throughout the works of our old poets, such as Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Drayton.

Footnotes: 

1.  Introduction, p. 12.

2.  Folkard’s “Plant Legends,” p. 389.

3.  See Judith xv. 13.

4.  “Flower-lore,” pp. 197-8.

5.  “Plant-lore of Shakespeare.”

6.  “Flower-lore,” p. 168.

CHAPTER XV.