anity, 
oni, 
iclent 
who 
were | 
| 
| 
5 the | 
nned | 
sider. 
ties, | 
for | 
fine| . 


THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. Vil 

of legendary song into the broad sunshine of verit- 
able history. She says: ‘‘ This royal adventurer— 
the banished and aspiring (Henry of) Lancaster— 
| appears to have been the person who gave the 
Forget-me-not its emblematical and poetical mean- 
| ing, by uniting it, at the period of his exile, with 
the initial letters of his. watchword, Souveignue vous 
de moi; thus rendering it the symbol of remem- 
brance, and, like the subsequent fatal roses of | 
York and Lancaster, and Stuart, the lily of Bour- | 
bon, and the violet of Napoleon, an _ historical 
| flower.” It is a beautiful and graceful little plant, 
aE re end es 
| 
| 
| 
with its slender stem, and oblong leaves of a pale 
semi-transparent green, and its clusters of cerulean 
blossoms, each with an eye like a tiny gold stud 
set round with turquoises. 
There is more than one version of the story 
which assigns the origin of the name Plantagenet 
to the Latin appellation of the common Broom— 
Planta genista. ‘The one most commonly be- 
lieved,” says Miss Pratt, in her charming little 
work, the ‘‘ Wild Flowers of the Year,” ‘‘is that 
the name was assumed by Geoffrey, Earl of Anjou, 
the husband of Matilda, the haughty Empress of 
Germany, who, having placed a sprig of the broom 
jin his helmet on the day of battle, acquired the | 
surname, and bequeathed it to his descendants.” 









