Plants of the Crucifixion.
In Brittany the Vervain is known as the Herb of the Cross. John White, writing in 1624, says of it—
“Hallow’d be thou Vervain, as thou growest in the ground,
For in the Mount of Calvary thou first was found.
Thou healedst our Saviour Jesus Christ
And staunchedst His bleeding wound.
In the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I take thee from the ground.”
In the Flax-fields of Flanders, there grows a plant called the Roodselken, the red spots on the leaves of which betoken the blood which fell on it from the Cross, and which neither rain nor snow has since been able to wash off. In Cheshire a similar legend is attached to the Orchis maculata, which is there called Gethsemane.
“Those deep unwrought marks,
The villager will tell thee,