(Fritillaria)

2nd April 2024

Photo Credit: fotolichen (Getty Images Signature), CANVA

QUOTATION

By this the boy that by her side lay killed

Was melted like vapour from her sight,

And in his blood that on the ground lay spilled

A purple flower sprung up, checkered with white,

Resembling well his pale cheeks and the blood

which in round drops upon their whiteness stood.

VENUS & ADONIS, Line 1165 to 1170

There have been other suggestions as to the identity of the purple flower checkered with white, which Shakespeare associates with the dead Adonis, but Fritillaria melagris must be a strong candidate. The story derives from Greek myth where Adonis is turned into a flower after being killed by a boar. There is a genus of flower in the Buttercup family, which carries the name ‘Adonis’ in its scientific name. Adonis annua is a bright red flower, sometimes called Pheasant’s Eye which was also known in Shakespeare’s time. John Gerard (1597) tells us that ‘the red floure of Adonis, groweth wilde in the west parts of England among their corne, even as May-weed doth in other parts’. This would have been the obvious choice for Shakespeare to pick but he chooses to identify Adonis’ transformation with a relatively new garden plant, the Fritillaria or ‘Ginny Hen Flower’. Gerard does not state clearly where the Fritillaria comes from but Parkinson writing in 1629 says that it that ‘the first of these plants were first brought to our knowledge from France, where it groweth plentifully around Orleance’.

There are different opinions about when Fritillaria meleagris was introduced to Britain but it is known to John Gerard by 1597. There are well known meadows of naturalised Fritillaria around Oxfordshire.

More Information

Berkshire, Buckinghamshire & Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust: Iffley Meadows

Folger Shakespeare: Search Shakespeare’s Works

John Gerard, 1597 The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes (1636 edition accessed via Archive.org)

Ovid, Metamorphoses Book 10, Venus and Adonis

Parkinson, J. 1629, Paradise in sole paradisus terrestris (accessed via Archive.org)