Our old friend Parkinson describes Pinks as "wild, or small, Gilloflowers, some bearing single and some double flowers, some smooth, almost without any deep dents on the edges, and some jagged, or, as it were, feathered. Some growing upright, like unto Gilloflowers, others creeping, or spreading, some of one color, some of another, and many of divers colors."
He gives Double and Single Pinks, Feathered or Jagged Pinks, Star Pinks, Great Sea Gilloflower, or Great Thrift, "often used in gardens to empale or border a knot, because it abideth green in Winter and Summer and that by cutting it may grow thick and be kept in what form one list." We also find Single Red Sweet John, Single White Sweet John; Double Sweet John; Single Red Sweet William; Double Red Sweet William; Speckled Sweet William, or London Pride; Deep Red, or Murrey Color, Sweet William; and Single White Sweet William.
"These," he adds, "are all generally called Armerius or Armeria, yet some have called them, Vetonica agrestis and others Herba Tunica, Scarlatea and Carophyllus silvestris. We do in English, in most places call the first, or narrower-leaved kinds, Sweet Johns and all the rest Sweet Williams; yet in some places they call the broader-leaved kinds that are not spotted Tolmeiners and London Tufts; but the speckled kind is termed by our English Gentlewomen, for the most part, London Pride. We have not known of any of these used in physic."
These spicy pinks and luscious July flowers and the simple Sweet-Johns and Sweet-Williams as well recall the lovely lines of Matthew Arnold:
Soon will the high midsummer pomp come on.
Soon will the musk carnations break and swell,
Soon shall we have gold-dusted Snapdragon,
Sweet-william with his homely cottage smell,
And stocks in fragrant blow;
Roses that down the alleys shine afar,
And open jasmine in muffled lattices
And groups under the dreaming garden trees
And the pale moon and the white dreaming star.
VI
Marigold and Larkspur
MARIGOLD (Calendula officinalis). Shakespeare was devoted to the marigold. He always speaks of it with poetic rapture.
The marigold that goes to bed with the sun
And with him rises, weeping,
is Perdita's idea of the shining flower, which in these few words she tells us closes its petals in the evening and at dawn awakens wet with dew.[64]