conuly

There is a flower, I've heard them say
That's called heartsease by night and day

Which got me thinking about heartsease, which we used to have growing in our front yard, and which is the ancestor of modern pansies (that's for thoughts). I spent a (kinda brief) period in my life fascinated by my ability to identify plants, and so actually know a few variant names for plants such as, well, heartsease. Wikipedia says that there are more than 200 names for that plant, and I believe it. A quick google search gives me any number of alternative terms, the most interesting and nicest being:

Johnny-jump-up, of course (I love that name)
Jack-jump-up-and-kiss-me
Love-lies-bleeding
Love-in-idleness
Kit-run-in-the-fields
Cuddle-me
Godmothers-and-godfathers

Honestly, the names run together a bit. I've always wondered, really, at these phrase-names of plants - how did anybody come up with them, and did they really refer to these plants this way all the time? Poetic isn't the word for some of them!

At any rate, it's a good thing that these plants do have so many names - how silly would any song sound that ran "There is a plant, I heard them say, that's called kit-run-in-the-fields by night and day", or "cuddle-me", for that matter - cuddling is entirely the problem, and kinda why she's singing this depressing song involving green grass to begin with. (Now - is green a color of inconstant love because it's appropriate, or because talking about taking people where "the grass grows green" and being in your grave with the "green grass growing" is very alliterative?)