Open afresh your round of starry folds,
Ye ardent Marigolds!
Dry up the moisture from your golden lids,
For great Apollo bids
That in these days your praises should be sung
On many harps, which he has lately strung;
And when again your dewyness he kisses
Tell him I have you in my world of blisses!
So happly when I rove in some far vale
His mighty voice may come upon the gale.
The Shakespearian marigold must not be confused with the French marigold (Flos Africanus), called also Indian gilliflower, flower of Africa, and flower of Tunis. A long chapter on this marigold appears in Parkinson's book. This is the tightly rolled up little flower of irregular ragged petals, but of a rich, deep golden hue.
Parkinson also speaks of the great Peruvian sunflower, which he admires greatly and describes with enthusiasm. We know it well as our common sunflower with its dark center and yellow rays—a magnificent specimen of the floral world, worthy of the adoration of the Incas and of more than we usually accord to it.
LARKSPUR (Delphinium). "Lark's-heels trim," one of the flowers in the introductory song of "The Two Noble Kinsmen," is the Delphinium, also called larkspur, lark's-claw, lark's-toes, and knight's-spur. The generic name is derived from the Greek delphinium, because the buds were thought to resemble the form of a dolphin.
As with many other plants, there were two kinds, the "wild" and the "tame"; and it was the wild kind that was "nourished up in gardens," according to Parkinson, who describes the plant as having "small, long, green leaves, finely cut, almost like fennel and the branches ending in a long spike of hollow flowers with a long spur behind them. They are of several colors: bluish purple, or white, or ash color, or red, paler or deeper, and parti-colored of two colors in a flower.
"They are called diversely by divers writers as Consolida regulis, Calearis flos, Flos regius, Buccinum Romanorum, and Cuminum silvestre alterum Dioscoridis; but the most usual name with us is Delphinium. But whether it be the true Delphinium of Dioscorides, or the Poet's Hyacinth, or the Flower of Ajax, another place is fitter to discuss than this. We call them in English Larks-heels, Larkspurs, Larkstoes, or claws, and Monks-hoods. There is no use of any of these in Physicke in these days that I know, but are wholly spent for their flowers sake."
A modern botanist remarks:
"The gardener's ideal has been the full-flowered spike with a goodly range of colors on the chord of blue. We think of larkspur as blue. Some of these blues are pale as the sky, some pure cobalt, others indigo and still others are a strange broken blue, gorgeous and intense, yet impure, glittering on the surface as if it were strewn with broken glass, and sometimes darkened into red. The center of a larkspur is often grotesque; the hairy petals suggest a bee at the heart of a flower, and the flower itself looks like a little creature poised for flight. In structure the garden race has changed very little from the primitive type, though that type has wandered far from the simplicity of the buttercup, which names the Ranunculacæ. Whatever path of evolution the larkspur has trod, it is very clear that the goal at which it has arrived is cross-fertilization by means of the bee. At some time along the path the calix took on the duties of the corolla, became highly colored, developed a spur, while at the same time the corolla lessened both in size and in importance. The stamens mature before the pistil and are so placed that the bee cannot get at the honey without covering its head with pollen which it then bears to another flower."
The name of Monk's-hood is also given to the Blue Helmet-flower, or aconite.[67]