There’s little doubt that many superstitions have similarly prosaic origins. In the days before vacuum cleaners, the temptation for mothers to ban these work-generating posies from the parlour was understandable. This adage is said to have come about because the tiny white blossoms drop quickly. Like sweet woodruff, cow parsley has the reputation of “breaking your mother’s heart”. The runner-up roots in these ribald contests weren’t wasted, however and were stashed in their finder’s money boxes to ensure increases to the family income.Ĭow parsley is often called Devil’s parsley its close resemblance to hemlock (a highly poisonous white flower closely linked with witchcraft) may have some bearing. The winning womandrake, as it was often called, was hung in the bar until an even more realistic sample could be found. Yet in Cambridgeshire white bryony’s human torso-shaped root was the object of a pub competition to find the most womanly specimen. White bryony is said to scream when pulled from the ground, in the same way as mandrake (which it’s often falsely called), and was also claimed to be unlucky in the house. It was said that milkmaids were the only flowers excluded from may garlands for fear that the wearer would be dragged under the hill to Faeryland. Nor were milkmaids (cuckoo flower or lady’s smock) permitted because it was recognised as a fairy flower. For instance, she wouldn’t allow may blossom in the house before May morning had passed. Lilies, however, weren’t the only flower to draw my mother’s disapproval, as well as that of many of her generation. Why? Because in her view Arum Lilies are the Death Flower, and their presence in the home is an unerring harbinger of death in the family (though she could accept their popularity as a bridal bouquet flower without question). The moment my mother spotted them she threw a tantrum of monumental proportions and bodily evicted myself and the blooms.
I once took home a bundle of Arum Lilies, discarded from the greenhouses of a local nurseryman.
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