SECRET OF THE CHARM OF FLOWERS
When my mind was occupied with the subject of the last chapter--the
human quality in some sweet bird voices--it struck me forcibly that
all resemblances to man in the animal and vegetable worlds and in
inanimate nature, enter largely into and strongly colour our aesthetic
feelings. We have but to listen to the human tones in wind and water,
and in animal voices; and to recognise the human shape in plant, and
rock, and cloud, and in the round heads of certain mammals, like the
seal; and the human expression in the eyes, and faces generally, of
many mammals, birds and reptiles, to know that these casual
resemblances are a great deal to us. They constitute the expression of
numberless natural sights and sounds with which we are familiar,
although in a majority of cases the resemblance being but slight, and
to some one quality only, we are not conscious of the cause of the
expression.
It was principally with flowers, which excite more attention and give
more pleasure than most natural objects, that my mind was occupied in
this connection; for here it seemed to me that the effect was similar
to that produced on the mind by sweet human-like tones in bird music.
In other words, a very great if not the principal charm of the flower
was to be traced to the human associations of its colouring; and this
was, in some cases, more than all its other attractions, including
beauty of form, purity and brilliance of colour, and the harmonious
arrangement of colours; and, finally, fragrance, where such a quality
existed.
We see, then, that there is an intimate connection between the two
subjects--human associations in the colouring of flowers and in the
voices of birds; and that in both cases this association constitutes,
or is a principal element in, the expression. This connection, and the
fact that the present subject was suggested and appeared almost an
inevitable outcome of the one last discussed, must be my excuse for
introducing a chapter on flowers in a book on birds--or birds and man.
But an excuse is hardly needed. It must strike most readers that a
great fault of books on birds is, that there is too much about birds
in them, consequently that a chapter about something else, which has
not exactly been dragged in, may come as a positive relief.
As the word expression which occurs with frequency in this chapter was
not understood in the sense in which I used it on the first appearance
of the book, it may be well to explain that it is not used here in its
ordinary meaning as the quality in a face, or picture, or any work of
art, which indicates thought or feeling. Here the word has the meaning
given to it by writers on the aesthetic sense as descriptive of the
quality imparted to an object by its associations. These may be
untraceable: we may not be conscious and as a rule we are not
conscious that any such associations exist; nevertheless they are in
us all the time, and with what they add to an object may enhance and
even double its intrinsic beauty and charm.
* * * * *
I have somewhere read a very ancient legend, which tells that man was
originally made of many materials, and that at the last a bunch of
wild flowers was gathered and thrown into the mixture to give colour
to his eyes. It is a pretty story, but might have been better told,
since it is certain that flowers which have delicate and beautiful
flesh-tints are attractive mainly on that account, just as blue and
some purples delight us chiefly because of their associations with the
human iris. The skin, too, needed some beautiful colour, and there
were red as well as blue flowers in the bunch; and the red flowers
being most abundant in nature and in greater variety of tints, give us
altogether more pleasure than their beautiful rivals in our affection.
The blue flower is associated, consciously or not, with the human blue
eye; and as the floral blue is in all or nearly all instances pure and
beautiful, it is like the most beautiful human eye. This association,
and not the colour itself, strikes me as the true cause of the
superior attraction which the blue flower has for most of us. 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. As a human colour, blue comes first
in a blue-eyed race because it is the colour of the most important
feature, and, we may say, of the very soul in man.
Some purple flowers stand next in our regard on account of their
nearness in colour to the pure blue. The wild hyacinth, blue-bottle,
violet, and pansy, and some others, will occur to every one. These are
the purple flowers in which blue predominates, and on that account
have the same expression as the blue. The purples in which red
predominates are akin in expression to the reds, and are associated
with flesh-tints and blood. And here it may be noted that the blue and
blue-purple flowers, which have the greatest charm for us, are those
in which not only the colour of the eye but some resemblance in their
form to the iris, with its central spot representing the pupil,
appears. For example, the flax, borage, blue geranium, periwinkle,
forget-me-not, speedwell, pansy and blue pimpernel, are actually more
to us than some larger and handsomer blue flowers, such as the
blue-bottle, vipers' bugloss, and succory, and of blue flowers seen in
masses.
With regard to the numerous blue and purple-blue flowers which we all
admire, or rather for which we all feel so great an affection, we find
that in many cases their very names have been suggested by their human
associations--by their expression.
Love-in-a-mist, angels' eyes, forget-me-not, and heartsease, are
familiar examples. Heartsease and pansy both strike us as peculiarly
appropriate to one of our commonest and most universal garden flowers;
yet we see something besides the sympathetic and restful expression
which suggested these names in this flower--a certain suggestion of
demureness, in fact, reminding those who have seen Guido's picture of
the "Adoration of the Virgin," of one of his loveliest angels whose
angelical eyes and face reveal some desire for admiration and love in
the spectator. And that expression, too, of the pansy named
Love-in-Idleness, has been described, coarsely or rudely it may be, in
some of its country names: "Kiss me behind the garden gate," and,
better (or worse) still, "Meet-her-i'-th'-entry-kiss-her-i'-th'-buttery."
Of this order of names are None-so-pretty and Pretty maids, Pretty
Betsy, Kiss-me-quick. Even such a name as Tears of the blood of Christ
does not sound extravagantly fanciful or startling when we look at the
glowing deep golden crimson of the wall flower; nor of a blue flower,
the germander speedwell, such names as The more I see you the more I
love you, and Angels' tears, and Tears of Christ, with many more.
A writer on our wild flowers, in speaking of their vernacular names of
this kind, has said: "Could we penetrate to the original suggestive
idea that called forth its name, it would bring valuable information
about the first openings of the human mind towards nature; and the
merest dream of such a discovery invests with a strange charm the
words that could tell, if we could understand, so much of the
forgotten infancy of the human race."
What a roll of words and what a mighty and mysterious business is here
made of a very simple little matter! It is a charming example of the
strange helplessness, not to say imbecility, which affects most of
those who have been trained in our mind-killing schools; trained not
to think, but taught to go for anything and everything they desire to
know to the books. If the books in the British Museum fail to say why
our ancestors hundreds of years ago named a flower None-so-pretty or
Love-in-a-mist, why then we must be satisfied to sit in thick darkness
with regard to this matter until some heaven-born genius descends to
illuminate us! Yet I daresay there is not a country child who does not
occasionally invent a name for some plant or creature which has
attracted his attention; and in many cases the child's new name is
suggested by some human association in the object--some resemblance to
be seen in form or colour or sound. Not books but the light of nature,
the experience of our own early years, the look which no person not
blinded by reading can fail to see in a flower, is sufficient to
reveal all this hidden wonderful knowledge about the first openings of
the heart towards nature, during the remote infancy of the human race.
From this it will be seen that I am not claiming a discovery; that
what I have called a secret of the charm of flowers is a secret known
to every man, woman, and child, even to those of my own friends who
stoutly deny that they have any such knowledge. But I think it is best
known to children. What I am here doing is merely to bring together
and put in form certain more or less vague thoughts and feelings which
I (and therefore all of us) have about flowers; and it is a small
matter, but it happens to be one which no person has hitherto
attempted.
It may be that in some of my readers' minds--those who, like the
sceptical friends I have mentioned, are not distinctly conscious of
the cause or secret of the expression of a flower--some doubt may
still remain after what has been said of the blue and purple-blue
blossom. Such a doubt ought to disappear when the reds are considered,
and when it is found that the expression peculiar to red flowers
varies infinitely in degree, and is always greatest in those shades of
the colour which come nearest to the most beautiful flesh-tints.
When I say "beautiful flesh-tints" I am thinking of the aesthetic
pleasure which we receive from the expression, the associations, of
the red flower. The expression which delights is in the soft and
delicate shades; and in the texture which is sometimes like the
beautiful soft skin; but the expression would exist still in the case
of floral tints resembling the unpleasant reds, or the reds which
disgust us, in the human face. And we most of us know that these
distressing hues are to be seen in some flowers. I remember that I
once went into a florist's shop, and seeing a great mass of hard
purple-red cinerarias on a shelf I made some remark about them. "Yes,
are they not beautiful?" said the woman in the shop. "No, I loathe the
sight of them," I returned. "So do I!" she said very quickly, and then
added that she called them beautiful because she had to sell them.
She, too, had no doubt seen that same purple-red colour in the evil
flower called "grog-blossom," and in the faces of many middle-aged
lovers of the bottle, male and female, who would perish before their
time, to the great relief of their kindred, and whose actions after
they were gone would not smell sweet and blossom in the dust.
The reds we like best in flowers are the delicate roseate and pinky
shades; they are more to us than the purest and most luminous tints.
And here, as with bird notes which delight us on account of their
resemblance to fresh, young, highly musical human voices, flowers
please us best when they exhibit the loveliest human tints--the apple
blossom and the bindweed, musk mallow and almond and wild rose, for
example. After these we are most taken with the deeper but soft and
not too luminous reds--the red which we admire in the red
horse-chestnut blossom, and many other flowers, down to the minute
pimpernel. Next come the intense rosy reds seen in the herb-robert and
other wild geraniums, valerian, red campion and ragged robin; and this
shade of red, intensified but still soft, is seen in the willow-herb
and foxglove, and, still more intensified, in the bell- and
small-leafed heath. Some if not all of these pleasing reds have purple
in them, and there are very many distinctly purple flowers that appeal
to us in the same way that red flowers do, receiving their expression
from the same cause. There is some purple colour in most skins, and
even some blue.
The azured harebell, like thy veins,
is a familiar verse from Cymbeline; any one can see the resemblance to
the pale blue of that admired and loved blossom in the blue veins of
any person with a delicate skin. Purples and purplish reds in masses
are mostly seen in young persons of delicate skins and high colour in
frosty weather in winter, when the eyes sparkle and the face glows
with the happy sensations natural to the young and healthy during and
after outdoor exercise. The skin purples and purple-reds here
described are beautiful, and may be matched to a nicety in many
flowers; the human purple may be seen (to name a very common wild
flower) in purple loosestrife and the large marsh mallow, and in
dozens and scores of other familiar purple flowers; and the purple-red
hue in many richly coloured skins has its exact shade in common
hounds' tongue, and in other dark and purple-red flowers. But we
always find, I fancy, that the expression due to human association in
a purple flower is greatest when this colour (as in the human face) is
placed side by side or fades into some shade of red or pink. I think
we may see this even in a small flower like the fumitory, in which one
portion is deep purple and all the rest of the blossoms a delicate
pink. Even when the red is very intense, as in the common field poppy,
the pleasing expression of purple on red is very evident.
To return to pure reds. We may say that just as purples in flowers
look best, or have a greater degree of expression, when appearing in
or with reds, so do the most delicate rose and pink shades appeal most
to us when they appear as a tinge or blush on white flowers. Probably
the flower that gives the most pleasure on account of its beautiful
flesh-tints of different shades is the Gloire de Dijon rose, so common
with us and so universal a favourite. Roses, being mostly of the
garden, are out of my line, but they are certainly glorious to look
at--glorious because of their associations, their expression, whether
we know it or not. One can forgive Thomas Carew the conceit in his
lines--
Ask me no more where Jove bestows
When June is past, the fading rose,
For in your beauty's orient deep
These flowers as in their causes sleep.
But all reds have something human, even the most luminous scarlets and
crimsons--the scarlet verbena, the poppy, our garden geraniums,
etc.--although in intensity they so greatly surpass the brightest colour
of the lips and the most vivid blush on the cheek. Luminous reds are
not, however, confined to lips and cheeks: even the fingers when held up
before the eyes to the sun or to firelight show a very delicate and
beautiful red; and this same brilliant floral hue is seen at times in
the membrane of the ear. It is, in fact, the colour of blood, and that
bright fluid, which is the life, and is often spilt, comes very much
into the human associations of flowers. The Persian poet, whose name is
best left unwritten, since from hearing it too often most persons are
now sick and tired of it, has said,
I sometimes think that never blooms so red
The rose as where some buried Caesar bled.
There is many and many a "plant of the blood of men." Our most common
Love-lies-bleeding with its "dropping wells" of crimson serves to
remind us that there are numberless vulgar names that express this
resemblance and association. The thought or fancy is found everywhere
in poetic literature, in the fables of antiquity, in the tales and
folk-lore of all nations, civilised and barbarous.
I think that we can more quickly recognise this human interest in a
flower, due to its colour, and best appreciate its aesthetic value from
this cause, when we turn from the blues, purples, and reds, to the
whites and the yellows. The feeling these last give us is distinctly
different in character from that produced by the others. They are not
like us, nor like any living sentient thing we are related to: there
is no kinship, no human quality.
When I say "no kinship, no human quality," I refer to flowers that are
entirely pure white or pure yellow; in some dull or impure yellows,
and in white and yellow flowers that have some tinge or mixture of red
or purple, we do get the expression of the red and purple flower. The
crystalline and snow white of the whitest flowers do indeed resemble
the white of the eyeballs and the teeth in human faces; but we may see
that this human white colour by itself has no human association in a
flower.
The whiteness of the white flower where there is any red is never
unhuman, probably because a very brilliant red or rose colour on some
delicate skins causes the light flesh-tints to appear white by
contrast, and is the complexion known as "milk and roses." The
apple-blossom is a beautiful example, and the beloved daisy--the "wee,
modest, crimson-tipped flower," which would be so much less dear but
for that touch of human crimson. This is the herb-Margaret of so many
tender and pretty legends, that has white for purity and red for
repentance. Even those who have never read these legends and that
prettiest, most pathetic of all which tells of the daisy's origin,
find a secret charm in the flower. Among other common examples are the
rosy-white hawthorn, wood anemone, bindweed, dropwort, and many
others. In the dropwort the rosy buds are seen among the creamy white
open flowers; and the expression is always very marked and beautiful
when there is any red or purple tinge or blush on cream-whites and
ivory-whites. When we look from the dropwort to its nearest relative,
the common meadow-sweet, we see how great a charm the touch of
rose-red has given to the first: the meadow-sweet has no expression of
the kind we are considering--no human association.
In pure yellow flowers, as in pure white, human interest is wanting.
It is true that yellow is a human colour, since in the hair we find
yellows of different shades--it is a pity that we cannot find, or have
not found, a better word than "shades" for the specific differences of
a colour. There is the so-called tow, the tawny, the bronze, the
simple yellow, and the golden, which includes many varieties, and the
hair called carroty. But none of these has the flower yellow. Richard
Jefferies tells us that when he placed a sovereign by the side of a
dandelion he saw how unlike the two colours were--that, in fact, no
two colours could seem more unlike than the yellow of gold and the
yellow of the flower. It is not necessary to set a lock of hair and
any yellow flower side by side to know how utterly different the hues
are. The yellow of the hair is like that of metals, of clay, of stone,
and of various earthy substances, and like the fur of some mammals,
and like xanthophyll in leaf and stalk, and the yellow sometimes seen
in clouds. When Ossian, in his famous address to the sun, speaks of
his yellow hair floating on the eastern clouds, we instantly feel the
truth as well as beauty of the simile. We admire the yellow flower for
the purity and brilliance of its colour, just as we admire some bird
notes solely for the purity and brightness of the sound, however
unlike the human voice they may be. We also admire it in many
instances for the exquisite beauty of its form, and the beauty of the
contrast of pure yellow and deep green, as in the yellow flag,
mimulus, and numerous other plants. But however much we may admire, we
do not experience that intimate and tender feeling which the blues and
reds inspire in us; in other words, the yellow flower has not the
expression which distinguishes those of other colours. Thus, when
Tennyson speaks of the "speedwell's darling blue," we know that he is
right--that he expresses a feeling about this flower common to all of
us; but no poet would make so great, so absurd a mistake as to
describe the purest and loveliest yellow of the most prized and
familiar wild flower--buttercup or kingcup, yellow flag, sea poppy,
marsh marigold, or broom, or furze, or rock-rose, let us say--by such
a word--the word that denotes an intimate and affectionate
feeling--the feeling one cherishes for the loved ones of our kind. Nor
could that word of Tennyson be properly used of any pure white
flower--the stitchwort for instance; nor of any white and yellow
flower like the Marguerite. But no sooner do you get a touch of rose
or crimson in the whitest flower, as we see in the daisy and
eyebright, than you can say of it that it is a "dear" or a "darling"
colour, and no one can find fault with the expression.
When we consider the dull and impure yellows sometimes seen in
flowers, and some soft yellows seen in combination with pleasing
wholesome reds, as in the honeysuckle, we may find something of the
expression--the human association--in yellow flowers. For there is
yellow in the skin, even in perfect health; it appears strongest on
the neck, and spread round to the throat and chin, and is a warm buff,
very beautiful in some women; but very little of this tint appears in
the face. When a tinge of this warm buffy yellow and creamy yellow is
seen mixed with warmer reds, as in the Gloire de Dijon rose, the
effect is most beautiful and the expression most marked. But the
expression in flowers of a pale dull, impure yellow, where there is an
expression, is unpleasant. It is the yellow of unhealthy skins, of
faces discoloured by jaundice, dyspepsia, and other ailments. We
commonly say of such flowers that they are "sickly" in colour, and the
association is with sick and decaying humanity. Gerarde, in describing
such hues in flowers, was fond of the word "overworn"; and it was a
very good word, and, like the one now in use, is derived from the
association.
It will be noted by those who are acquainted with many flowers that I
have given the names of but few--it may be too few--as examples, and
that these are nearly all of familiar wild flowers. My reason for not
going to the garden is, that our cultivated blooms are not only
artificially produced, and in some degree monstrosities, but they are
seen in unnatural conditions, in crowds and masses, the various kinds
too near together, and in most cases selected on account of their
gorgeous colouring. The effect produced, however delightful it may be
in some ways, is confusing to those simple natural feelings which
flowers in a state of nature cause in us.
I confess that gardens in most cases affect me disagreeably; hence I
avoid them, and think and know little about garden flowers. It is of
course impossible not to go into gardens. The large garden is the
greatly valued annexe of the large house, and is as much or more to
the mistress than the coverts to the master; and when I am asked to go
into the garden to see and admire all that is there, I cannot say,
"Madam, I hate gardens." On the contrary, I must weakly comply and
pretend to be pleased. And when going the rounds of her paradise my
eyes light by chance on a bed of tulips, or scarlet geraniums, or blue
larkspurs, or detested calceolarias or cinerarias--a great patch of
coloured flame springing out of a square or round bed of grassless,
brown, desolate earth--the effect is more than disagreeable: the mass
of colour glares at and takes possession of me, and spreads itself
over and blots out a hundred delicate and prized images of things seen
that existed in the mind.
But I am going too far, and perhaps making an enemy of a reader when I
would much prefer to have him (or her) for a friend.
I have named few flowers, and those all the most familiar kinds,
because it seemed to me that many examples would have had a confusing
effect on readers who do not intimately know many species, or do not
remember the exact colour in each case, and are therefore unable to
reproduce in their minds the exact expression--the feeling which every
flower conveys. On the other hand, the reader who knows and loves
flowers, who has in his mind the distinct images of many scores,
perhaps of two or three hundreds of species, can add to my example
many more from his own memory.
There is one objection to the explanation given here of the cause of
the charm of certain flowers, which will instantly occur to some
readers, and may as well be answered in advance. This view, or theory,
must be wrong, a reader will perhaps say, because my own preference is
for a yellow flower (the primrose or daffodil, let us say), which to
me has a beauty and charm exceeding all other flowers.
The obvious explanation of such a preference would be that the
particular flower preferred is intimately associated with
recollections of a happy childhood, or of early life. The associations
will have made it a flower among flowers, charged with a subtle magic,
so that the mere sight or smell of it calls up beautiful visions
before the mind's eye. Every person bred in a country place is
affected in this way by certain natural objects and odours; and I
recall the case of Cuvier, who was always affected to tears by the
sight of some common yellow flower, the name of which I have
forgotten.
The way to test the theory is to take, or think of, two or three or
half-a-dozen flowers that have no personal associations with one's own
early life--that are not, like the primrose and daffodil in the
foregoing instance, sacred flowers, unlike all others; some with and
some without human colouring, and consider the feeling produced in
each case on the mind. If any one will look at, say, a Gloire de Dijon
rose (in some persons its mental image will serve as well as the
object itself) and then at a perfect white chrysanthemum, or lily, or
other beautiful white flower; then at a perfect yellow chrysanthemum,
or an allamanda, and at any exquisitely beautiful orchid, that has no
human colour in it, which he may be acquainted with, he will probably
say: I admire these chrysanthemums and other flowers more than the
rose; they are most perfect in their beauty--I cannot imagine anything
more beautiful; but though the rose is less beautiful and splendid,
the admiration I have for it appears to differ somewhat in
character--to be mixed with some new element which makes this flower
actually more to me than the others.
That something different, and something more, is the human association
which this flower has for us in virtue of its colour; and the new
element--the feeling it inspires, which has something of tenderness
and affection in it--is one and the same with the feeling which we
have for human beauty.
* * * * *
The foregoing has been given here with a few alterations,
mainly verbal, as it appeared originally: something now remains to
be added.
When writing about the wild flowers of West Cornwall in a work on
The Land's End (1908), I returned to the subject of the charm of
flowers due to their human colouring, and will repeat here much of
what was there said.
Some of the readers of my flower chapter were not convinced that I had
made out my case: it came as a surprise to them, and in some instances
they cherished views of their own which they did not want to give up.
Thus, two of my critics, writing independently, expressed their belief
that flowers are precious to us and seem more beautiful than they are,
because they are absolutely unrelated to our human life with its
passions, sorrows, and tragedies--because, looking at flowers, we are
taken into, or have glimpses of, another and brighter world such as a
disembodied spirit might find itself in. It was nothing more than a
pretty fancy; but I had other more thoughtful critics, and during my
correspondence with them I became convinced of a serious omission in
my account of the blue flower, when I said that its expression was due
to association with the blue eye in man. The strongest of my friendly
adversaries informed me that any man can revel at will among his own
personal feelings and associations; that these were a "kind of bloom
on the intrinsic beauty of things"--a happy phrase! He then asks:
"What does blue suggest to a sailor? Sometimes the sea, sometimes the
sky, sometimes the Blue Peter; but if you ask him what does blue paint
suggest he would say mourning, that being the colour of a ship's
mourning. Dr Sutton always called blue no colour, because it was the
colour of death, the sign of the withdrawal of life."
This was interesting but fails as an argument since it was taken
for granted in the chapter that blue in a flower or anything else,
and in fact any colour, possesses individual associations for
every one of us, according to what we are, to the temper of our
minds, to the conditions in which we exist, our vocation, our
early life, and so on. Blue may suggest sea and sky and the Blue
Peter to a sailor, and yet the blue flower have an expression due
to its human association in him as in another.
But my critic dropped by chance into something better, when he
went on to ask, "Why shouldn't the heaven's blue make us love
flowers? It does in my case I know, and I can feel the different
blues of skies and air and distance in flower blue."
Undoubtedly he was right; the blue sky, fair weather, the open air,
was a suggestion of the blue flower. It amazed me to think of the
years I had spent under blue skies and of all I had felt about blue
flowers, without stumbling upon this very simple fact. So simple, so
near to the surface that you no sooner hear it than you imagine you
have always known it! It was impossible to look at blue flowers and
not be convinced of its truth, especially when the flowers were spread
over considerable areas, as when I looked at wild hyacinths in the
spring woods, or followed the interminable blue band of the vernal
squill on the west Cornish coast, or saw large arid tracts of land in
Suffolk blue with viper's bugloss.
Oddly enough just after the letter containing this criticism had
reached me, another correspondent who was also among my opponents,
sent me this fine passage from the old writer Sir John Ferne, on azure
in blazoning: "Which blew colour representeth the Aire amongst the
elements, that of all the rest is the greatest favourer of life, as
the only nurse and maintainer of spirits in any living creature. The
colour blew is commonly taken from the blue skye which appeareth so
often as the tempests be overblowne, and notes prosperous successe and
good fortune to the wearer in all his affayres."
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. Such are the pansy, violet, speedwell,
hairbell, lungwort, blue geranium, etc. It may be that in all flowers
of this kind too an element in the expression is due to the
fair-weather associations with the colour; but these associations must
be very much stronger in the case of a blue flower always seen in
masses and sheets of colour as the wild hyacinth. Among dark-eyed
races the fair-weather associations would alone give the blue flower
its expression. I shouldn't wonder, if some explorer with a curious
mind would try to find out what savages feel about flowers, that he
would discover in them a special regard for the blue flower.