Flowers
HE Wall-flower is always to be met with in old walls and ruined buildings. The Scarlet-runner is a creeping plant with a scarlet inflorescence. Another creeping plant is the Woodbine, a corruption of the Anglo-Saxon wudebend, "bending around wood," also known as the Honeysuckle, owing to the fragrance of its flowers, which young people love to suck. The Corn-flower and the Blue-bottle both grow among corn; the latter owes its name to its colour and bottle-shape. Fox-glove is a corruption of "Folks'glove," in allusion first to the fairies, and secondly, to its fancied resemblance to the fingers of a glove. The Hare-bell, also known as the Blue Bell of Scotland, is properly the "Ayr-bell," so called from the district where it was first noticed, and its bellshaped flower. The Globe-flower has a globular infloresence. The Coxcomb is characterized by red flowers after the style of a cock's comb. The Tulip bears the Persian name for "turban" from its similarity to the head-dress of the Orientals.
Jasmine is almost identical with Fasaman, the Persian term for this flower.
In olden times Bachelor's Buttons were greatly prized by love-sick swains who practised a kind of divination with them in order to discover whether they were destined to marry their sweethearts.
Speedwell is an appropriate name for a plant whose flowers fall off and fly away when it is gathered.
The name of Forget-me-not originated in the following legend :- A German knight and his lady were walking on the bank of the Danube, when the fair one saw a beautiful tuft of Myosotis palustris growing in the water, and expressed a wish to have it. With chivalrous alacrity the knight at once plunged into the river and gathered his prize; but before he could regain the steep and slippery bank, encumbered as he was by his heavy armour, he was drawn by the treacherous eddy into a deep pool.
Finding he could not save himself, he threw the flowers ashore to his mistress as he sank, and uttered with his last breath the words "Vergess mein nicht!" ("Forget-me-not!") Hence this flower has come to be universally regarded as the emblem of fidelity.