April 19: Forget Me Nots: Cutest little flowers ever

Today I found a flower so small and cute it you almost want to look at it through a microscope. It's hard to tell in this picture, but each flower is only about a quarter inch wide -- teeny! They are Forget Me Nots. Henry David Thoreau wrote, "The mouse-ear forget-me-not, Myosotis laxa, ...is one of the most interesting minute flowers. It is the more beautiful for being small and unpretending; even flowers must be modest."

Forget Me Nots

There's a bunch of interesting things about these flowers in literature and folklore. In the Lord of the Rings, the character of Tom Bombadil is said to have the color of the flower on his jacket. In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, when Harry first meets Professor Lockhart, Lockhart "was wearing robes of forget-me-not blue that exactly matched his eyes.


And here's some more information, taken directly from Wikipedia:

• In a German legend, God named all the plants when a tiny unnamed one cried out, "Forget-me-not, O Lord!" God replied, "That shall be your name."
• Henry IV adopted the flower as his symbol during his exile in 1398, and retained the symbol upon his return to England the following year.
• In 15th-century Germany, it was supposed that the wearers of the flower would not be forgotten by their lovers. Legend has it that in medieval times, a knight and his lady were walking along the side of a river. He picked aposy of flowers, but because of the weight of his armour he fell into the river. As he was drowning he threw the posy to his loved one and shouted "Forget-me-not." It was often worn by ladies as a sign of faithfulness and enduring love.
• Prior to becoming the tenth province of Canada in 1949, Newfoundland (then a separate British Dominion) used the Forget-me-not as a symbol of remembrance of that nation's war dead. This practice is still in limited use today, though Newfoundlanders have adopted the Flanders Poppy as well.
• Freemasons began using the flower in 1926 as a symbol well known in Germany as message not to forget the poor and desperate. Many other German charities were also using it at this time. In later years, by a handful of Masons, it was a means of recognition in place of the square and compass design. This was done across Nazi occupied Europe to avoid any danger of being singled out and persecuted. The symbol of the forget-me-not in modern Masonry has become more prevalent and exaggerated claims about the use of the symbol are often made in order to promote sales of bumper stickers of the symbol. Today it is an interchangeable symbol with Freemasonry and some also use the Forget-me-not to remember those masons who were victimized by theNazi regime. In English Freemasonry it is more commonly now worn to remember those that have died as a symbol that you may be gone but not forgotten.