flower meanings!

I'm keeping a running list of plants I call attention to, and will probably pull their meanings in at some point. I snagged a .txt copy of the oldest book (1885) referenced on my trusty language of flowers website, and am referring to that as I go along.

The scene I did yesterday... those are locust trees, specifically black locust trees. There were toooons of them by one of the houses I grew up in, and I was picturing a specific grove from the side of our yard as I wrote that bit. The flowers are an amazing thing, they'll come in later. But the meaning of the locust tree is "affection beyond the grave". This is the main reason the tree turns up in my Phisto stories as much as it does, but the more I think of it, the more I like the tree for its own sake. Oddly, I'd always thought of it as something of a scrub tree, but it's actually one of the hardest woods that grows in North America (though bugs eating it somewhat deters from that).

The little white flowers by the creek... I'm not entirely sure what they are, I've been nagging my poor floral genius of a mom with emailed questions about plants all week. I remember so many from my childhood, but, I don't always know the names. But one of the things those little flowers might be is Candytuft. Blooms at the right time of year I think, and the plant structure works...

The meaning? "Indifference".


I got happy chills when I read that, and instantly knew that, if it is candytuft growing there, it was planted after the locust trees, in snide rebuttal to their haunting message.

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