Blue flower

“ Fill a tall jar with spires of larkspur of the purest blue known to garden flowers. Unless the sun shines fully on them they seem to swallow light; mingle with them some stalks of white foxgloves, Canterbury bells, or surround them with Madonna lilies, a fringe of spirea, or the slender Deutzia gracilis, more frequently seen in florists' windows than in the garden, [Pg 354] and a new meaning is given the blue flower; the black shadows disappear from its depth and sky reflections replace them. ”

“ The little blue flower, the perennial of the soul, is difficult to extirpate, and it keeps growing up again. It does not show itself for twenty years, and then all of a sudden, you know not why nor how, it sprouts, and then forth comes a burst of blossoms. ”

“ But somehow, after they had worked in the sweet-scented earth for a while and had seen others working, the light of the sun and the freshness of the air made them feel in better humor; the wind blew away their evil fancies and their headaches, and because there was so much talk and wondering about the magic of the Blue Flower they became interested, and wanted to see what it would do for them when it blossomed. Scarcely any of them had ever tried to make a flower grow before and they gradually thought of it a great deal. ”

“ In the fields, orchards, and gardens, white flowers, yellow flowers, red flowers were common; but blue flowers were rare and retiring, as if they guarded a secret which men should come and search out. ”

“ The blue flower, like the absolute ideal, is never found in this world, poets may at times dimly feel its nearness, and perhaps even catch a brief glimpse of it in some lonely forest glade, far from the haunts of men, but it is in vain to try to pluck it. If for a moment its perfume fills the air, the senses are intoxicated and the soul swells with poetic rapture." [27] It would lead us too far afield to follow up the traces of this mystical symbolism in the writings of our New England transcendentalists. ”

“ But still we held on, and now beside us were blooming the flower-gardens of the brief and brilliant Himalayan summer—beds of delicate purple anemones, gorgeous golden ranunculus holding its golden shields to the sun, orange poppies, masses of forget-me-nots of a deep, glowing blue—a burning blue, not like the fair azure of the Western flower, but like the royal blue of the Virgin’s robe in a Flemish missal. ”

“ In conclusion, after having adopted this new idea, my view is still that the human association is the principal factor in the expression of the blue flower, or at all events in a majority of flowers that bloom more or less sparingly and are usually seen as single blooms, not as mere splashes of colour. ”

“ But if it lives at all, I know that it is because there is one there who remembers, and keeps the hour of visitation, and treads the steep way, and breathes the beautiful name over the spring, and sometimes I think that long before my seeking and journeying brings me to the Blue Flower, it will bloom for Ruamie beside the still waters of the Source. ”

“ A peculiar little blue flower is frequently observed with yellow petals, seeming to look up from the surrounding nakedness and desolation with the appealing expression of human eyes. Snow-white daisies and delicate little harebells come into view at intervals, struggling for a brief and lonely existence. ”

“ The dainty flower, growing in dense tufts, makes up in numbers what it lacks in size and lasting power, flecking our meadows with purplish ultramarine blue in a sunny June morning. Later in the day, apparently there are no blossoms there, for all are tightly closed, never to bloom again. ”

“ One of my correspondents, anxious to prove me wrong, quoted an idea expressed by some one that flowers are beautiful and precious to us because, apart from their intrinsic charm of colour, fragrance and form, they are absolutely unrelated to our human life with its passions, sorrows and tragedies; and, finally, he said of the blue flower, that if it had any associations at all they were not human ”

“ Pluck your rose and bring it indoors, and place it side by side with other blossoms—yellow flag and blue periwinkle, and shining yellow marsh-marigold, and poppy and cornflower—and it has no lustre, and is no more to the soul than a flower made out of wax or paper. ”

“ Like animals and birds, plants have their favourite haunts: violets love a bank with a southern aspect, especially if there be a hedge at the back for further shelter. Where you have by chance lighted upon a wild flower once you may generally reckon upon finding it again next year—such as the white variety of the bluebell or wild hyacinth, for which, unless you mark the place, you may search in vain amid the crowded blue bloom of the commoner sort. ”

“ By the time it is pleased by color it will love the blossoms, and the spell of happiness and good fortune will begin to work for it. It is not one person here and there who must plant the flower, but each and every one. To those who have not land about them, all the land is free. You may plant by the roadside, in a cranny of a wall, in an old box or glass or tub, in any bare space in any man's field or garden. But each must plant his seeds and watch over and feed them. Next year when the Blue Flower blossoms I shall ride through my kingdom and bestow my rewards. ”

“ I like the reds and blues of the other flowers, too. They seem brighter than ever to-day. Sometimes I sit all day and look at them.”
[143]
“Oh! we have a rainbow this afternoon. It always looks to me like a great garden of flowers stretched in bands across the sky. I like to think that its yellow and red and blue are made up of flowers like these in our garden here.”
“Do you see that colour next to the green? I love it; it is so dark and deep. Many times I have wished we might have a flower on earth just like it.” ”

“ You would think, by the way she paints, that her colors cost her something enormous; she will only give you a single pure touch, just where the petal turns into light; but down in the bell all is subdued, and under the petal all is subdued, even in the showiest flower. What you thought was bright blue is, when you look close, only dusty gray, or green, or purple, or every color in the world at once, only a single gleam or streak of pure blue in the center of it. ”

“ Surely the business of the blue garden is to be beautiful as well as to be blue. My own idea is that it should be beautiful first, and then just as blue as may be consistent with its best possible beauty. Moreover, any experienced colourist knows that the blues will be more telling—more purely blue—by the juxtaposition of rightly placed complementary colour. ”

“ It is remarkable that two flowers, so distinct from each other as the Spring blue-bell and the fragile harebell of Autumn, should be so frequently described as one and the same flower. No one thinks of mistaking a snowdrop for a lily, and yet these two blue-bells are more unlike. ”

“ We have three species of these charming rose-purple composites, all of which flower late in summer and remain to display their marvels of beauty long after the tender plants have served their time.
Among all the late blossoms there are none for which I have a greater fondness than the gentians. They come, with their mingled purple and blue, at a time when those colors have become unusually rare, for they are never common at any time of year. Some of the species bear flowers that long seem upon the verge of coming into full bloom, and disappoint those who look for wide-open flowers. ”

“ It will grow and flower freely in any soil, but the aspect should be sunny; it is easily increased by division or rootlets. I may add that the very long stems of this prostrate plant (when in bloom) are well adapted for indoor decoration. Where pendent, deep blue flowers are needed, there are very few good blues so suitable. ”

“ For instance, are the mauve and plum-coloured flowers a break-back to the ancestral type; that is to say, was the more primitive verna red? Blue flowers are more highly organised than those of other colours; are, then, all flowers striving to be blue—like Emerson’s grass, “striving to be man?” The French-blue Gentians are of warmer tint than those of Cambridge hue ”

“ The same white setting enhances the brighter colours, though in a less degree than blue, which is, next to magenta, one of the most difficult colours to place in the garden. In view of this fact it is not strange that it is a comparatively unusual hue in the flower world and a very rare one among our neighbourly eastern birds, the only three that wear it conspicuously being the bluebird, indigo bird, and the bluejay.
It is this useful quality as a setting that gives value to many white flowers lacking intrinsic beauty, like sweet alyssum, candy-tuft, the yarrows, and the double feverfew. ”

“ Apart from association blue is less attractive than red, orange, and yellow, because less luminous; furthermore green is the least effective background for such a colour as blue in so small an object as a flower; and, as a fact, we see that at a little distance the blue of the flower is absorbed and disappears in the surrounding green, while reds and yellows keep their splendour. Nevertheless the blue has a stronger hold on our affections. ”

“ The plants should grow of their own accord, and as their vagrant fancy takes them. The prettiest of all wild gardens is when the bluebells are so thick [33] that they seem a reflection of the sky, or the celandine lies in sunny patches on a bank, or the primrose and violet come up here and there at the foot of old forest-trees. Sometimes, too, less common flowers, which have been planted years ago, and have spread as it has pleased them, give an effect of even greater beauty. We remember one large shrubbery all blue with hepaticas, and another golden with the winter aconite. ”

“ The bead of this color is given for attainments in Nature Lore—knowledge of trees, flowers, ferns, grasses, mosses, birds, bees, butterflies, moths, stars. If the girl knows the planets and seven constellations and their stories, she may wear the blue bead. Also if she does a certain amount of work in a flower or vegetable garden of her own, raises a crop of something and cans, pickles or preserves her product, or if she carries on an experimental garden, planting, for instance, one plot with pedigreed and one with unpedigreed seeds and recording the results, she wins the blue bead. ”

“ The violet, like the rose and lily, has ever been the poet’s flower. This is not one of our earliest violets; it blossoms later than the early white violet, V. rotundifolia or than the early Blue Violet, V. cucullata, or that delicate species V. striata, the lilac striped violet, which adorns the banks and hill sides on some of our plain lands, early in the month of May. ”

“ A case also has been recorded of a blue variety which for three successive years gave offsets producing white flowers with a red centre. (11/80. 'Des Jacinthes' etc. Amsterdam 1768 page 122.) Another hyacinth bore (11/81. 'Gardener's Chronicle' 1845 page 212.) on the same truss a perfectly pink and a perfectly blue flower. I have seen a bulb producing at the same time one stalk or truss with fine blue flowers, another with fine red flowers, and a third with blue flowers on one side and red on the other; several of the flowers being also longitudinally striped red and blue. ”

“ They usually pretend to be flowers, because the court sits in the Fairies’ Basin, and there are so many flowers there, and all along the Baby Walk, that a flower is the thing least likely to attract attention. They dress exactly like flowers, and change with the seasons, putting on white when lilies are in and blue for bluebells, and so on. ”

“ I end not far from my going forth By picking the faded blue Of the last remaining aster flower To carry again to you. ”

“ And the blue gentian flower, that, in the breeze,
Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last. ”

“ The little wind-flower, whose just opened eye
Is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at—
Startling the loiterer in the naked groves
With unexpected beauty, for the time
Of blossoms and green leaves is yet afar. ”

“ I would not have included this plant in the list, because it does not winter well and a stock of seedling plants should be grown each year and wintered in a coldframe, did it not present such an airy, open-headed plant covered with its gentian-blue flowers for a long time. A good blue is a rare color in the garden. ”

“ Why make so much of fragmentary blue
In here and there a bird, or butterfly,
Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,
When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue? ”

“ Where, however, it is issue of a yellow or a red type-flower, then I think we are justified in suspecting anæmia, for yellow or red must pass through blue before it can healthily and with all warrant emerge as white. There are no leaps in progressive evolution ”

“ Least common of the colors given by nature to bird, insect, and blossom is bright pure blue. Blue flowers are believed to proclaim for the plant that bears them a longer history of unchecked development than flowers of any other primary color suggest ”

“ I Blue Squills
How many million Aprils came
Before I ever knew
How white a cherry bough could be,
A bed of squills, how blue!
And many a dancing April
When life is done with me,
Will lift the blue flame of the flower
And the white flame of the tree.
Oh burn me with your beauty, then,
Oh hurt me, tree and flower,
Lest in the end death try to take
Even this glistening hour.
O shaken flowers, O shimmering trees,
O sunlit white and blue,
Wound me, that I, through endless sleep,
May bear the scar of you. ”