From: Myths and Legends of Flowers, Trees, Fruits, and Plants, by Charles M. Skinner, c. 1911 by J.B. Lippincott Company

From: Myths and Legends of Flowers, Trees, Fruits, and Plants, by Charles M. Skinner, c. 1911 by J.B. Lippincott Company

From: Myths and Legends of Flowers, Trees, Fruits, and Plants, by Charles M. Skinner, c. 1911 by J.B. Lippincott Company

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], fell in love with her, and at last won her heart. When the unsuspecting Seriokai went to gather fruit, as usual, his wife followed close with a stone ax, for cutting fuel. As the man was descending an avocado tree she struck at him so vehemently that his right leg fell from his body, and he lay helpless.

Gathering up the fruit, the woman hurried to the tapir’s hiding-place, and the wicked couple went away together. Seriokai was found by a neighbor, who stanched his wound and took him home, where he was nursed back to health. So soon as he could, he mended his leg with a wooden stump; then, armed with bow and arrows, he started after the runaways. Although their path had long been obliterated, the Indian traced them through the wilderness by the avocado trees that had sprung from the seed scattered by the faithless wife.

It was a long and weary following. He climbed mountains and forded rivers, but always there were avocado trees stretching away and away, and leading him nearer to his revenge. The trees grew smaller, showing that they were young. They shrank to saplings. They became mere sprouts. At last there were no trees, but only seeds, and then footprints. And so, at last, he overtook them.

The outraged husband sent an arrow through the body of the tapir just as the beast bounded off from the edge of the world, and, seeing her companion so transfixed, the woman leaped also. Hot in his thirst for vengeance, Seriokai followed, and still he hunts the unrepentant ones through space. He is Orion, the woman is the Pleiades, and the tapir is the Hyades, with bloody eye.

From: Myths and Legends of Flowers, Trees, Fruits, and Plants, by Charles M. Skinner, c. 1911 by J.B. Lippincott Company

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 whenever a merchant went from one town to another, his spies informed him, and, doffing the raiment of a prince, he rode with his company to a defile in the hills of the depth of the woods and there awaited his victim, who went on wi th empty saddle-bags and an aching heart.

When the prince had shared with his troopers, reserving the lion’s share for himself, he dismissed his band, all but a single slave, with whose help he buried his treasure. As the slave bent to place the plund er in the pit, the prince slew him, tumbling the corpse into the hollow and covering it, with his own hands, for the ghost of a person buried with treasure would guard it forever.

For years the prince pursued his evil course, but the reckoning came. A fter a successful foray he withdrew to bury the loot, after his fashion, but this time the slave who was to dig the pit turned suddenly upon his master and with a blow of a spade clove his skull. He flung the body into the cavity, covered it, and carried away the treasure. And presently blood trees grew above every pit where dishonest money had been hidden, but the sap of the tree that sprang from the grave of the robber prince was the deepest red of all.

From: Myths and Legends of Flowers, Trees, Fruits, and Plants, by Charles M. Skinner, c. 1911 by J.B. Lippincott Company

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 spot that represents human blood. Near the end of the seventeenth century there lived in Franklin a farmer named Micah Rood, who was regarded by his neighbors as of rather a worthless sort, fond of lei sure yet fond of money. In the early days of the colony trading was done mostly by roving peddlers, and while these gentry gained modestly in their dealings with people who were of the narrowest means, they sometimes carried sums that would excite the cup idity of men less moral than the New Englanders. One day a peddler, making the rounds of the settlements, was found dead on the Rood farm, with a gash in his head and his pack empty. Rood was suspected, and either knowledge of this suspicion or the proddi ngs of his conscience forced him into strict seclusion. If he had robbed the man, he had small good of his plunder, for he spent money no more freely than before. Indeed, he became neglectful of his farm, and his house fell into disrepair. That year the t ree beneath which the peddler had died did a strange thing: it put forth red apples instead of yellow, each with a blood stain at its heart, as if in witness against the murderer; and the gossips would have it that the decay of the farm and the air of mis fortune that clouded the life of Micah Rood in his last days were the results of his victim’s curse. Rood died without revealing his secret, if he had any, but his tree lived, and its fruit has been grafted on hundreds of other orchards.

From: Myths and Legends of Flowers, Trees, Fruits, and Plants, by Charles M. Skinner, c. 1911 by J.B. Lippincott Company

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 coffin. It is told that a young farmer incurred the enmity of two prosperous neighbors, who brought a false accusation and had him arrested for highway robbery. He was convicted and sent to his death–for in those times robbery was a hanging matter. Before the execution he said, “If I am innocent of the crime for which I suffer, the grass, for one generation at least, will not cover my grave.” So soon as the bell began to toll for the hanging, the sky darkened, and as Davies put his foot on the scaffold there was a glare of lightning and an appalling roar of thunder that struck terror to his accusers, and the multitude that had assembled to see the killing fled, crying that the end of things had come. In 1852, thirty years after the hanging, a village clergyman in Montgomery wrote that the grass had not yet covered the grave, and that, although attempts had been made to induce a growth, it always died, leaving the soil cold and bare, as if burned off by lightning.

From: Myths and Legends of Flowers, Trees, Fruits, and Plants, by Charles M. Skinner, c. 1911 by J.B. Lippincott Company

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 coat, kisses her hand laughingly, and leaps into the river to pluck them for her, regardless of the current, the fangs of rock that lift through the foam, the cold of the evening, and the protest of the girl. He crosses safely, plucks the morsels of color, and is almost at the bank again when he is wrung by a cruel cramp, and can no longer hold his way against the whirl and surge of the rapid. The roar of the fall, not far below, is in his ears; he realizes that his hour is come. Looking into the white face of his beloved, he flings his bouquet at her feet with his last strength, cries, “Forget me not!” and disappears. She never does forget him, but wears the flowers in her hair until her own death.

From: Myths and Legends of Flowers, Trees, Fruits, and Plants, by Charles M. Skinner, c. 1911 by J.B. Lippincott Company

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 blood of heathen became the heathen, or heath, for short. When all except two of the tribe had been killed, these survivors–father and son–were taken before Kenneth, the conqueror, who promised them life if they would tell him how to make heath beer. They remained silent. Thinking to force the older man to compliance, the king put the son to death before the father’s eyes. In anger and disgust, the old man refused to grant any favor to so brutal a victor, and the secret of the drink was never known, although, for shame’s sake, Kenneth suffered his prisoner to live.

In Jura the secret still survives, for the peasants of that region continue to make a beer in which two parts of heath tops are combined with one of malt. But the heath of Jura is not stained with a people’s blood.

From: Myths and Legends of Flowers, Trees, Fruits, and Plants, by Charles M. Skinner, c. 1911 by J.B. Lippincott Company

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 it is supposed to be a plant known in Germany as God’s herb, and to have many healing qualities. In the Greek myth the sun god Apollo is loved by Clytia, for whom he cares so little that he goes a-wooing the princess Leukothea. Clytia reveals the liason to the king, who, furious at the misconduct of his daughter, buries her alive.

Apollo returns to the heavens without so much as a look for the unhappy Clytia, who, bitterly conscious of the mischief she has done, falls to the ground and lies there for nine days, watching the passing of Apollo in his chariot, and praying for a look of pity. Seeing her wasted with privation and sorrow, the gods have mercy and change her into the heliotrope. She still lies at length upon the earth and looks toward heaven with half averted eye, as waiting complete forgiveness and acceptance.

From: Myths and Legends of Flowers, Trees, Fruits, and Plants, by Charles M. Skinner, c. 1911 by J.B. Lippincott Company