The Folk-lore of Plants

The trees and flowers associated with the crucifixion are widely represented, and have given rise to many a pretty legend. Several plants are said to owe their dark-stained blossoms to the blood-drops which trickled from the cross; amongst these being the wood-sorrel, the spotted persicaria, the arum, the purple orchis, which is known in Cheshire as "Gethsemane," and the red anemone, which has been termed the "blood-drops of Christ." A Flemish legend, too, accounts in the same way for the crimson-spotted leaves of the rood-selken. The plant which has gained the unenviable notoriety of supplying the crown of thorns has been variously stated as the boxthorn, the bramble, the buckthorns, [14] and barberry, while Mr. Conway quotes an old tradition, which tells how the drops of blood that fell from the crown of thorns, composed of the rose-briar, fell to the ground and blossomed to roses. [15] Some again maintain that the wild hyssop was employed, and one plant which was specially signalled out in olden times is the auberpine or white-thorn. In Germany holly is Christ-thorn, and according to an Eastern tradition it was the prickly rush, but as Mr. King [16] remarks, "the belief of the East has been tolerably constant to what was possibly the real plant employed, the nabk (Zizyphus spina-Christi), a species of buckthorn." The negroes of the West Indies say that, "a branch of the cashew tree was used, and that in consequence one of the bright golden petals of the flower became black and blood-stained."