THE SYMBOLISM OF FLOWERS. 



133 



of it, decides for the common wood-sorrel (Cr- 

 alis Acetosella), and we think he is right. It is cer- 

 tain, from the poet Spenser and others, that the 

 Irish of the lower classes, as far down as the reign 

 of Elizabeth, considered shamrocks as suitable for 

 food. Now the wood-sorrel has a pleasant sub-acid 

 flavor and would make an excellent salad ; whereas 

 clovers or trefoils, which many assert are the true 

 shamrock, would be very indifferent eating, More- 

 over, on every recurring St. Patrick's day every true 

 Hibernian desires to have a " shamrock so green " 

 in his button-hole, and large quantities of the wood- 

 sorrel are sent to Covent Garden market from Ire- 

 land annually, ready for " St. Patrick's day in the 

 morning," when every son and daughter of Erin is 

 proud to " mount " the national emblem. 



Concerning the controversy as to which plant is 

 the shamrock, Mr. Sowerby observes very truly : 



" The great feast of St. Patrick, the tutelar saint 

 of Ireland, is in the early spring when clover cer- 

 tainly would not be in perfection, but when the tiny 

 wood-sorrel would be in all its beauty. This cir- 

 cumstance inclines us to think that in this little 

 plant we have the one honored by St. Patrick when 

 he drew from the triple leaflet the illustration he 

 sought to give his simple hearers of the great doc- 

 trine of the Trinity, or triune nature of God." 



It is by no means certain, however, that the wood- 

 sorrel is the original shamrock. Many other plants 

 have been taken for it. " Cybele Hibernica," pub- 

 lished in 1866, says that the creeping or white 

 clover is "the plant still worn as shamrock on St. 

 Patrick's Day, though Medicago lupidina is also sold 

 in Dublin as the shamrock. " Threkeld, the earliest 

 writer upon Irish wild plants, says that a white 

 form of Trifolimn prafense — by which he probably 

 meant the white clover — is the plant " worn by the 

 people in their hats on St. Patrick's Day." Other 

 species of clover have been supposed to be the 

 shamrock, and even the water-cress has been urged 

 as the plant gathered by the saint, but as this plant 

 has not a three-parted leaf it has received little 

 favor among other claimants. Still others assert 

 that the story of the representation of the Trinity 

 by the use of a tri-parted leaf is entirely fictitious 

 and of modern origin. But as a matter of present 

 fact, the clover appears to be regarded as the sham- 

 rock. On St. Patrick's Day, the "old women," 

 writes Dyer, "with plenteous supplies of trefoil, 

 may be heard in every direction crying ' buy my 

 shamrock, green shamrocks,' while little children 

 have ' Patrick's crosses ' pinned to their sleeves." 



The leek, appropriated to Cambria, does not 

 appear so poetic or striking an emblem as either of 



the three preceding, and its origin is enveloped in 

 obscurity. That it is of fairly long standing as the 

 national emblem of Wales may, however, be in- 

 ferred by Shakespeare making Fluellin, the Welsh- 

 man, wear it in his cap on St. Daniel's day to pro- 

 voke the ire of the pretendedly pugnacious Pistol. 



In Japan the beautiful chrysanthemum is highly 

 esteemed as a symbolic flower, and in Mexico the 

 cactus is patriotically held to be the emblem of the 

 land of the Aztecs. (Fig. 4.) 



Coming to modern times and individual cases, it 

 is well known that the great Napoleon selected the 

 violet as his characteristic and favorite flower. 

 Springing up in obscurity and retaining its perfume 



Fig. 7. Passion Flower, Lily, Star of Bethlehem. 



in death, it may indeed be fairly considered a won- 

 derful emblem of him who rose from the Corsican 

 valley to the throne of France, and whose name has 

 been a spell of power long after he drew his last 

 breath on the lonely rock in mid-Atlantic. A more 

 recent consecration of a simple blossom to a mem- 

 ory is seen in the popular wearing of the primrose 

 flower (Fig. 6) on each anniversary of the death of 

 Lord Beaconsfield. 



In older days, most of the Highland clans adopted 

 some vegetable emblem, a sprig of which they wore 

 in their bonnets, which enabled them to recognize 

 each other in battle. Sir Walter Scott was, of 

 course, aware of this, and in the " Lady of the 

 Lake " he makes the pine the badge or emblem of 



