s i
iUt . '1’
Í
f. T . ■ \.
I
I
: »
i' I
3 6 6 p P a n t b o r e , b e g e l^ / , ¿Hi. bijrie/'.
For nine long days all sustenance forbears ;
Her hunger cloy’d with dew, her thirst with tears:
Nor rose; but rivets on the god her eyes,
And ever turns her face to him that flies.
A t length to earth her stupid body cleaves ;
Her wan complexion turns to bloodless leaves,
Yet streaked with red : her perished limbs beget
A flower resembling the pale Violet;
Which, with the Sun, though rooted fast, doth move ;
And, being changed, yet changeth not her love.”— Sandys' Ovid.
Rapin, in error, alludes to the Sunflower {Hclianthus) as owing its
origin to Clytie. He says :—
“ But see where Clytie, pale with vain desires.
Bows her weak neck, and Phoebus still admires;
On rushy stems she lifts herself on high,
And courts a glance from his enliv’ning eye.”
The flower into which the hapless Clytie was metamorphosed
was not the scented Heliotrope, common to modern gardens, which
does not turn with the Sun, and, being of Peruvian origin, was of
course unknown to the ancients; neither was it the Helianthus,
or Sunflower, for that plant also came to us from the new world,
and was therefore equally unknown in the days when Ovid wrote
the tragic story of Clytie’s love and death. The Herla Clytie is
identified in an old German herbal {Hortus Medicus Camemrii)
with Hehotropium Tvicoccon. Gerarde figures four Heliotropiums,
or “ Tornesoles,” one of which he names Heliotropium Tricoccum]
and in his remarks on the Heliotrope or Turnsole, he says: “ Some
think it to be Herha Clytie into which the poets feign Clytia to be
metamorphosed; whence one writeth these verses:__
‘ Herba velut Clitice semper petit obvia solem,
Sic pia metis Christum, quo prece spectet, habet! })
Parkinson calls the same plant the Turnesole Scorpion Tayle.
Theophrastus alludes to the same Heliotropium under the name of
Herba Solaris. But we do not find that the flowers of this common
European species of Heliotrope answer the description given by
Ovid—“ A flower most like a Violet”—or by Pliny, who says of it:
“ The Heliotrope turns with the Sun, in cloudy weather even, so
great is its sympathy with that luminary: at night, as though in
regret, it closes its_ blue flowers.” The insignificant Heliotropium
or Turnsole, with its diminutive whitish blossom, cannot be the
flower depidted by Ovid, or the plant with “ blue flowers ” referred
to by Pliny. Moreover, Gerarde tells us that the European Turnsole
he figures “ is named Heliotropium, not because it is turned
about at the daily motion of the sunne, but by reason it flowereth in
the Summer solstice, at which time the sunne being farthest gone
from the equinoflial circle, returneth to the same.” In Mentzel’s
'Index Nominum Plantarum Multilinguis' (1682) we find that the old
Italian name of the Turnsole was Verrucaria (Wart-wort), and
Gerarde, in the index to his ‘ Herbal,’ states that Verrucaria is
p f a n t b o r e , b e g e i^ / , a n i. b ijr ic /. 6 ;
Tithymalus (Spurge), or Heliotropium minus. Referring to his description
of the Spurges, we note that he figures twenty-three varieties, the
first of which is called Wart-wort; and the second. Sun Spurge,
which is thus described :—■“ The second kinde (called Helioscopius
or Solisequius, and in English, according to his Greeke name, Sunne
Spurge, or Time Tithymale, of turning or keeping time with the sunne)
hath sundry reddish stalkes of a foot high; the leaves are like unto
Purslane, not so great nor thicke, but snipt about the edges : the
flowers are yellowish, and growing in little platters.” Here, then,
we have perhaps a sufficiently near approach to the pale flower of
Ovid; but nothing like the blue flower of Pliny. Among the
Spurges described by Gerarde, however, is one which he calls the
Venetian Sea Spurge, and this plant is stated to have bell-shaped
flowers of a dark or blackish purple colour, so that possibly this was
the flower indicated by Pliny. De Gubernatis, in his Mythologie
des Plantes, states that the flower into which Clytia was transformed
is the Helianthemum roseum of Decandolle. The author of ‘ Flower
Lore ’ says, “ The classic Sunflower is an annual of an insignificant
appearance, having many fabulous properties assigned to it. The
Heliotrope belongs to the natural order Boragine, and is a native
of the south-west of Europe.” The late Mr. H. A. Bright, in ‘ A Year
in a Lancashire Garden,’ tells us that one of our very best living
authorities on such a subjedt sent him “ the suggestion that the
common Salsafy, or possibly the Anagallis, may be the flower.”
Turner,in his ‘ Brittish Physician’ (1687), calls the yellow-flowered
Elecampane, the Sunflower. Other botanists suggest an Aster or
Calendula (Marigold): if this last suggestion be correct, the flower
called by Parkinson, in his ‘ Paradisus,' the Purple Marigold, and
by Gerarde Italian Starwort {Aster Italorum), comes nearest to
Pliny’s description. This flower is stated by Gerarde to have been
called by some the Blue Marigold, whose yellow European brother
Shakspeare describes as
“ The Marygold, that goes to bed with the sun,
And with it rises weeping.”
We may include the blue or purple Marigold among those flowers
of which Bacon writes; “ For the bowing and inclining the head,
it is found in the great Flower of the Sunne, in Marigolds, Wart
Wort, Mallow Flowers, and others.” Albertus Magnus accords
to the Heliotrope the following wonderful properties : “ Gather in
August the Heliotropon, wrap it in a Bay-leaf with a wolf’s tooth,
and it will, if placed under the pillow, show a man who has been
robbed where are his goods, and who has taken them. Also, if
placed in a church, it will keep fixed in their places all the women
present who have broken their marriage vow. This last is most
tried and most true.” According to another version, in order to
work this last charm, the Heliotrope-flower must be gathered in
August when the sun is in Leo, and be wrapped in a Laurel-leaf
before being deposited in the church.
i
J
\