[10] This flower is encompassed with thorns, and its root is said to have a poisonous quality.
[11] According to the old Fable, the Rose was at first always white, till Venus, while she was pursuing Adonis, scratched herself with its thorns, and thereby stained it with her cœlestial blood.
[12] The Amaranth.
[13] Alluding to the Civil Wars of York and Lancaster, in which the White Rose and the Red were adopted as tokens or devices by their different partisans.
[14] It is here to be noted that the autumnal Crocus is the Saffron Flower, so famous in Medicine.
[15] This flower opens in the morning, and fades away in the evening, closing up, and never opening again.
[16] According to the Old Fable, Jupiter being willing to make Hercules immortal, caused him to suck Juno while she was asleep; when the milk gushing out into a great quantity, some of it being spilt upon the sky, made the galaxy or milky way there, while the rest falling to the earth, gave birth to the White Lily.
[17] Juno is said to have conceived Mars by only touching the flower called Larkspur.
[18] Apollo having forsaken Clytie for this Nymph; the former, in return, informed Leucothoe’s father of his daughter’s amour with Phœbus. He thereupon buried Leucothoe alive; but Phœbus changed her into a Frankincense Tree; and after this, Clytie being discarded by the God, who was beyond measure offended with her, she pined away, and was changed into a Sun-Flower.
[19] Iris being the name given to the Rainbow.