Lily of the valley
11/06/24 13:11 Filed in: Personal
Flower preferences are subjective, although there is a language of flower meanings which depends on a shared understanding. White flowers are my favourite, and lily of the valley is the best of all. I recently gave lily of the valley to two people that I care about. This post is not about those relationships but about the flower itself and how humankind has reacted to it down the years.
My information about the flower comes from Wikipedia:
- It is a woodland flowering plant with sweetly scented, pendent, bell-shaped white flowers borne in sprays in spring (May is its best month).
- It is native throughout the cool temperate Northern Hemisphere in Asia and Europe.
- Chemically-speaking, its concentration of the organic compound known as cardiac glycosides makes it highly poisonous if consumed by humans or other animals. In fact it was used as a poison in episode 46 of the American TV series Breaking Bad.
- Other names include May bells, Our Lady's tears, and Mary's tears, and, in France, muguet.
- In pre-modern England, the plant was known as glovewort (as it was a wort used to create a salve for sore hands), or Apollinaris (according to a legend that it was discovered by Apollo).
The bible has around 20 references to the lily or lilies, notably in the Song of Songs. The only specific reference to lily of the valley is in Song of Songs 2.1: I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys. According to legend, the flower is said to have first blossomed where Eve's tears fell as she left the Garden of Eden.
Lily of the valley is the national flower of Finland. It is important in France as well: on 1 May for La Fête du Muguet, the flower is given to loved ones following a custom inaugurated by Charles IX, King of France, of the Valois dynasty, in 1561.
Lily of the valley has royal connections. It was part of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation bouquet in 1953 and it remained her favourite flower, becoming a regular feature of the floral displays in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. It was also used in Kate Middleton's wedding flowers in 2011, and it was the flower chosen by Princess Grace of Monaco to be featured in her bridal bouquet in 1956.
Lily of the valley is also a very popular scent in perfumes, often found as a base note in floral fragrances, such as Dior Diorissimo, Yardley London's Lily of the Valley, Chloé Eau de Parfum and Penhaligon's Lily of the Valley. Because no natural aromatic extract can be produced from lily of the valley, its scent must be recreated synthetically.
In culture, lily of the valley is the subject of a painting by Marc Chagall, now on display in a gallery in Moscow, and is the subject of poems by Simon Armitage, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Tchaikovsky.
The first time I came across lily of the valley was in a song of that name by the rock band Queen. It was written by Freddie Mercury, who also played the piano and provided all the vocals on the track. It featured on Queen's third album, Sheer Heart Attack, released in 1974. It is a beautiful song although the lyrics are obscure. This is verse 2:
Messenger from Seven Seas has flown
To tell the king of Rhye he's lost his throne
Wars will never cease
Is there time enough for peace?
But the lily of the valley
Doesn't know.
For this insight into its meaning, I am again indebted to Wikipedia:
In a 1999 interview, Brian May told the British music magazine Mojo, ‘Freddie's stuff was so heavily cloaked, lyrically ... But you could find out, just from little insights, that a lot of his private thoughts were in there, although a lot of the more meaningful stuff was not very accessible. Lily of the Valley was utterly heartfelt. It's about looking at his girlfriend and realising that his body needed to be somewhere else. It's a great piece of art, but it's the last song that would ever be a hit.’
l know what it means, when your body needs to be somewhere else – or in my case, something else.
And I have always liked flower arranging, an activity associated with the female of the species.