Uneducated Flowers

By R.M. Hamilton

The garden of Rose Bank House came with a well-stocked Blue Bell patch, and I am in love.

I will admit, I was initially a bit put out that they weren’t tulips.

Mum wanted to know what sort of bulbs they were and being a tad too impressed with my own knowledge about flowers, I promptly told her they were tulips. No blooms had come up but I sniffed the leaves and announced confidently they were tulips.

I must have been out of the florist shop a bit too long, because actually, the leaves look nothing like tulip leaves and goodness knows where I got the notion they smelt like tulip leaves.

But I did, and I was initially a bit irritated to be proven wrong. I got over it though, because I love bluebells, maybe even more than I love tulips.

I also found out an interesting fact about bluebells. They are said to be The Flower of Truth and allegedly, people who wear crowns of them can not lie.

How useful.

If this is true, then I can think of one or two professions that would benefit from including bluebell wreaths in their dress code.

This will not be entirely attractive. Some people do not have the faces to wear bluebell wreaths, but on the whole, the net sum gain of a bit more truth telling in our great institutions, will be worth the dubious aesthetic.

Bluebells represent also humility, loyalty, thankfulness and unfailing love.

The Latin name for bluebells is Hyacinthoides non-scripta.  I was intrigued by this name. Non-Scripta means ‘unlettered’ or ‘not written’. I wasn’t sure how a flower could be lettered.

I never met a flower I’d describe as ‘lettered’. Lovely things flowers, but not excessively educated.

Anyway, the mystery is cleared up by a little Greek Mythology. Or compounded. I can’t help it. Classical Mythology is not logical.

Appalling Apollo became friends with a Spartan prince called Hyacinth. Not a very good friend, apparently, because when a game of discus went wrong, Hyacinth got walloped in the head and died. Not being much of a god, Apollo couldn’t save him.

He did, however, create a flower from his friend’s blood and promise to blub over it every chance he got.

When the clever chaps who name flowers got around to naming the bluebell and landed on  Hyacinthoide, they wanted to make it clear that they weren’t referring to the Greek Myth. So, I think the ‘non-scripta’ probably means, ‘not written about’.

A mistake, frankly.

Much better to write about bluebells than Awful Apollo.

I find bluebells so much more appealing than Apollo, a particularly loathsome being, and if you don’t believe me, go read the part in Homer’s Iliad where he kills the dogs.

Bluebells don’t go around killing dogs, do they?

At least, not on purpose they don’t. They can’t help being poisonous and they certainly don’t shoot things with giant bows and arrows.

I plonked my teacup in the middle of some of the bluebells because the colour was too perfect to resist the temptation.

I might use it as a reference for an illustration of a wee mouse taking a bath amongst the flowers.

But I won’t paint the water the colour of tea!

If you’d like to learn how to make a professional posy, please check out my video. I used bluebells, but the technique will work with anything you may have in your garden.

Until next time, toodle-pip.

Love, Ruthie xx

Writing and photos belong to R.M. Hamilton. All rights reserved.