28 June 2009

Bachelor's button (cornflower)


This pink/white bicolor from our garden is a nice contrast to the usual blue color. The latter has a lot of historic and symbolic importance:
The blue cornflower has been the national flower of Estonia since 1968 and symbolizes daily bread to Estonians. It is also the symbol of the Estonian political party, People's Union, the Finnish political party, National Coalition Party, and the Swedish political party, Liberal People's Party...

The blue cornflower is also one of the national flowers of Germany. This is partly due to the story that when Queen Louise of Prussia was fleeing Berlin and pursued by Napoleon's forces, she hid her children in a field of cornflowers and kept them quiet by weaving wreaths for them from the flowers. The flower thus became identified with Prussia, not least because it was the same color as the Prussian military uniform. After the unification of Germany in 1875, it went on to became a symbol of the country as a whole. For this reason, in Austria the blue cornflower is a political symbol for pan-German and rightist ideas...

In France it is the symbol of the 11th November 1918 armistice and, as such, a common symbol for veterans... similar to the poppies worn in the United Kingdom and in Canada.

The cornflower is also the symbol for Motor Neurone Disease and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.
The photo enlarges to wallpaper size with a click.

2 comments:

  1. Cornflower is also a style of glassware made in Ontario, Canada.

    It's overrating if you ask me, but the locals love the stuff.

    http://www.cornflower.ca/History.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. How does the blue cornflower smell like?

    ReplyDelete