And ever since that time, it is said, the sunflower is inclined to face toward the sun.
DAKOTA FOLKLORE OF THE SPIDERWORT
The spiderwort (Tradescantia bracteata) and (Tradescantia occidentalis) is a beautiful native prairie flower which is known under numerous popular names. It is called spiderwort, spider lily, ink flower, king’s crown, and various other names. It has been proposed to add to the list another name, “flower-of-romance.” This name is proposed from the circumstance of a bit of pleasing sentiment connected with this flower in the folklore of the Dakota nation of Indians.
It is a charmingly beautiful and delicate flower, deep blue in color, with a tender-bodied plant of graceful lines. There is no more appealingly beautiful flower on the western prairies than this one when it is sparkling with dewdrops in the first beams of the rising sun. There is about it a suggestion of purity, freshness and daintiness.
When a young man of the Dakota nation is in love, and walking alone on the prairie finds this flower blooming, he stops and sings to it a song in which he personifies it with the qualities of his sweetheart’s personality as they are called to his mind by the appearance of the flower before him, its characteristics figuratively suggesting the characteristics of her whose image he carries romantically in his mind and heart. In his mind the beauties of the flower and the charms of the girl are mutually transmuted and flow together into one image.
The words of his song, translated from the Dakota language into the English, are something like this:
“Tiny, gladsome flower,
So winsome and modest,
Thou art dainty and sweet,
For love of thee I’d die.”