Thank god for Trader Joe's! Picked up this potted Hyacinth when I was in the Upper West Side yesterday, for just $2.99. In the midst of Polar Vortex number 2 (I think this is the winter word of 2014, at least on the East Coast), I was in desperate need of something that reminded me of the upcoming spring.
I've always been curious of the Victorian flower symbolism, wondered how many people actually were fluent in the "language of flowers", how universal/ubiquitous it's usage actually was. There was something delicious about it, arcane, perhaps a bit silly/romantic (depending on your perspective), with a dash of subterfuge/spy-novel-mystery.
It turns out the symbolism of the hyacinth way predates Victorian usage. For you budding etymologists out there, the -nth suffolk denotes a pre-Hellenic origin. In a nutshell, this is a racy gay love triangle. Apollo, the sun god, was the lover of a beautiful boy, Hyacinth. But Zephyr, the West Wind, was also taken with the boy, and jealous that his affections weren't returned. While Apollo and Hyacinth were throwing around a discus, Zephyr changed the course of the wind so the discus struck Hyacinth in the head, killing him. While Apollo was powerless to save his young love, he caused purple hyacinth flowers to spontaneously grow from blood that soaked the ground. Hyacinth would never completely vanish, and every spring he would be reborn.
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