Chrysanthemum: The Spectre Plant
Chrysanthemums grow all over the Mikado’s empire, save in Himaji, where it is ill luck to raise them, for this reason: In a castle of thirty towers in that city lived a lord who employed a servant named Okiku (kiku, chrysanthemum) to look after his bronzes, figures of brass, jewels, shrines, carvings, [...]

The Love of the South Wind for the Dandelion
An Algonquin tale of the love of the south wind for the dandelion, which is made in likeness of the sun: Shawondasee, the south wind, heavy, drowsy, lazy, likes to lie in the shade of live oaks and magnolias, inhaling the odor of blossoms and filling his [...]

The Cold Bitterness of Edelweiss
In one legend, the edelweiss is related to heaven, so near to which it grows, for an angel, wearing of her celestial home, longs to taste once more the bitterness of the earth. She receives permission to take her shape of flesh again, but, unprepared to mingle with a humanity that [...]

Adultery and Avocados
The avocado, or alligator pear, a soft and rather salve-like fruit, used pleasantly in salad, was a favorite food of Seriokai when he inhabited the wilds of Guiana, and he often rambled the forests of the Orinoco gathering store of it. During one of these excursions the tapir saw the woman [Seriokai's wife], [...]

The Blood Tree
The tree with whose juice the Aztecs dyed their cotton of a fine dark red, and which their descendants tap today, has its blood legend: In Amatlan lived a prince whose delight it was to deck hinself in gold and precious stones. He had a corps of bandi ts in his employ, and [...]

Micah Rood’s Apples
A sombre tradition concerns the Micah Rood apples, or bloody hearts, that made their appearance in Franklin Connecticut, but are now widely cultivated in other towns and States. They are sweet of flavor, fragrant, handsomely red outside, and while m ost of the flesh is white, there is at the core a red [...]

No Grass Will Grow on Davies’ Grave
In an English Tradition of the last century, the grass did not merely tremble on the happening of a tragedy; it refused to deck the grave of a man unjustly put to death. In the churchyard at Montgomery is a bare spot of the size and shape of a [...]

Forget Me Not!
Not many of the flowers retain their legends in their names, but the forget-me-not indicates its own history: A young man walking beside the Danube with his sweetheart notes her admiration for some flowers– blue as her eyes–that grew on an islet in the stream. He tosses off his shoes and hat and [...]

The Bloody Heath
The heath, or heather, that decorates the Scottish hills, commemorates in its name the efforts of the Christians to covert the Picts. When the latter were visited by armed missionaries who ordered them to cease the worship of false gods, the Picts unreasonably gave battle, and the plants that were bedewed with the [...]

Heliotrope: Shunned by the Sun
The Greek word heliotrope means to turn toward the sun. We apply the name to a modest flower of purple color and delightful odor, that came from Peru, and, being adopted into France, was called there herb of love. What the original heliotrope was, we do not know with certainty, but [...]