Shakespeare is right to make the daffodil come before the swallow dares, since according to Blomefield the average of seventeen annual observations gives 12th March for the daffodil’s flowering-day, and the swallow does not appear till 9th April at the earliest. Browning, too, is scientifically safe in letting his chaffinch sing now “that the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf.” Indeed, the most dilatory chaffinch must have been singing since 19th February, and in fortunate seasons might have been heard on 7th January. A floral calendar may be useful as an interpreter in antiquarian problems. Thus
Blomefield [12a] says that “the flos-cuculi, or cuckoo-flower of the older botanists, was so called from its opening its flowers about the time of the cuckoo’s commencing his call.” The botanist referred to may have been Gerarde, and the flower seems to be Cardamine pratensis, known as lady’s smock, also as the cuckoo-flower. Now the cuckoo begins his song (as the average of Blomefield’s seventeen years’ observation near Cambridge) on 29th April, [12b] and lady’s smock blossoms 19th April. [12c] The coincidence is but moderate, but it is cheering to find in Gilbert White’s Calendar, with its earlier South Country dates, that the events occur together: lady’s smock, 6th to 20th April; cuckoo, 7th to 26th April.
Wood-sorrel (Oxalis acetosella) was known as cuckoo-sorrel by the Saxons. In Stillingfleet’s Calendar of Flora (1755), it is said to flower on 16th April, and the cuckoo to begin his song on 17th April. It is pleasant to find, in a Swedish calendar of flora, that the cuckoo sings on 12th May, and the wood-sorrel flowers on 13th May. Lychnis flos-cuculi, the ragged robin, flowers on 19th May, and seems to have no kind of right to the name of a cuckoo-flower, though Gerarde remarks that it “flowers in April and May, when the cuckoo doth begin to sing her pleasant notes without stammering.” [12d]
I remember being told by a physician that a celebrated Polish violinist in his old age could not bear the sound of concerted music, but he would weep over a musical score of which he said, “These beggars don’t play out of tune.” This is also true of the great symphony of colour which the springtime unfolds. The trees are double-basses, and doubtless some are contra-fagotti, though I confess that I cannot speak positively on this point. Then come a mass of beautiful shrub-like plants which make up the rest of the string-band. As one who loves wind-instruments, I like to think that the flutes, oboes, and clarinets are the flowers of my vernal orchestra, decorating the great mass of stringed instruments with streaks and flames of colour.
In real music, we cannot say why certain sounds make an appropriate opening for a symphony; nor can we understand why the chorus of flowers should (as above pointed out) be led by mezereon (Daphne mezereum), followed by furze, hazel, the daisy, and the snowdrop.
Of course, their dates are not rigorously fixed: the plants just referred to vary in their dates of flowering in the following way:
Mezereon, 11th January to 2nd February;
Furze, 1st January to 4th April;
Hazel, 1st January to 20th February;
Snowdrop, 18th January to 16th February;