April Showers and Flowers
C. A. Asbrey
“The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day.
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You’re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak, a cloud come over the sunlit arch,
And wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you’re two months back in the middle of March.”
Robert Frost, Two Tramps in Mud Time, 1926
April is the beginning of spring. Even its name reflects the change of season. In Latin aperio means ‘I open’ referring to the buds and sprigs burgeoning with life in the northern hemisphere at this time of year. As people were historically so dependent on a good crop, it was a time of year that was very important to our ancestors. The spring season is rife with superstitions and folklore.
The birth flower for the month of April is the common daisy, Bellis Perennis. It’s commonly thought that the name comes from a corruption of an older name ‘Day’s Eye’ due to the fact that it closed in the evening and opened in the morning. Chaucer was known to call it ‘the eye of the day’. In medieval times it was called ‘Mary’s Rose’ or the ‘Bone Flower.’ In Scotland and the North of England it is also known as gowan. It grows all over the old world, needing little or no care, and has one of the longest blooming seasons in the plant calendar. Ancient daisy decorations on pottery and ornaments have been found in excavations in Crete, Egypt, and all over the Middle East going back at least 4,000 years. The Bellis part of the name is thought to mean pretty, but it could also relate to the Latin for war – bellum. This theory is supported by the medicinal use for the plant in treating injuries. Also known as bruisewort, and occasionally woundwort, it was used for healing wounds and treating bruising. Other medicinal uses suggest that a strong solution had anti-spasmodic properties that helped menstruation, bowel problems, and a decoction of the roots can treat eczema.
The heads are edible can be scattered over a salad to make it pretty, along with other edible flowers.
In Norse mythology Freya, goddess of love, beauty and fertility, declared the flower to be sacred. Also linked to Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. It led to simple rituals, still carried out today where the petals are plucked off one-by-one by young women across the whole of Europe repeating “he loves me, he loves me not“. Other fortune-telling games relating to the daisy has girls trying to predict the occupation of her future husband as the petals are removed. The verse takes many forms, but one of the oldest was, “Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief.“
Goethe had a pregnant Margherita plucking a daisy to tell her how Faust felt about her, but he wasn’t the only artist to weave the flower into their work. Shakespeare used it in Ophelia’s death scene, and in Love’s Labour’s Lost said that ‘daisies… do paint the meadows with delight’. Wordsworth wrote ‘To the Daisy‘, and Keats and Emily Dickinson also mentioned the flower.
In Celtic legend, when babies died, daisies were said to be sprinkled over the child’s grave by the gods to ease the suffering of the parents. The perennial nature of the plant meant it grew everywhere, and certainly on graves. It lead to the euphemism ‘pushing up the daisies.’ Linked to the spring equinox, the appearance of the daisy showed that the land was fertile, but in the triple deities of the Celts it related to the maiden, not the mother or the crone form, and as such, it was linked to innocence. It was also a sign of resilience, returning after being trampled and surviving throughout the summer. A daisy chain was said to protect a child from being abducted by the fairies.
A horse that didn’t lift its hooves high enough was nicknamed a daisy-cutter, and this term spread also to sports. In 1889 an English newspaper used the term for a low fast ball running along the ground. It wasn’t long before that term was used in Baseball for the same thing.
A 19th century slang term that’s gone out of fashion is ‘it’s daisy’. Meaningless to us, but to Victorian Brits it meant it was superb.
It it very well might be superb. Modern studies on the plant has found that a strong scientific basis for its reputation for healing wounds. Dried daisy flowers, powdered and extracted in n-butanol, accelerated wound-healing and decreased scarring on skin wounds. A later study found seven new saponins that promote collagen synthesis (constituents that have soap-like attributes and lower surface tension) in daisy flowers. Collagen is the main structural constituent of skin, which would explain how they contribute to wound healing. One type of saponin in Daisy flowers has also been found to inhibit tumours, so maybe it’s time to look at the humble daisy in a new light?