Myth and Folklore: Larkspur

Larkspurs have a bit of folklore in the family tree. The larkspur moniker itself comes from the resemblance of the spurred flowers to the claw of a lark. I'm not sure I see it, but that's unimportant, huh?

It's generic Delphinium comes to us from the Greeks and their opinion that that the flower's nectary was dolphin-shaped. And according to Greek myth, delphiniums sprang from the blood of Ajax because the letters ai appear in the flower. I'm able to see the resemblance to a lark's claw easier than I can find any letters of the alphabet anywhere about these flowers.

The Romans, showing a little more imagination, had a story about a man who is saved by a dolphin. He, of course, tells his friends of his rescue and they, of course, are gluttonous pigs who see a payday in the animal; they set out in hot pursuit of it. But the man manages to warn it in time. Ultimately, it is saved by the watery God Neptune, who turns the dolphin into a flower, the delphinium.

In Germany young men and women stared at the Midsummer fire through a bunch of larkspur. It was believed this would preserve their eyes for another year.

An old Italian myth tells of three brave warriors who slew a dangerous dragon. Once the beast was conquered, they wiped their swords on the grass to clean off the blood. Dragon's blood, as we all know, is blue. This blue blood made the blue flowers of larkspur, and the venom in the dragon's blood made the plant poisonous. Myths are a lot more entertaining than botany sometimes.

According to the Pawnee, Dream Woman had a nosy side, and was very curious about the goings on in the world of humans. What she did to satisfy this curiosity was to cut a hole in the sky and take some of that green material which is the inside color of the sky and made it into a stalk. Of course some blue flecks of the outside of the sky got mixed in. When she lowered this stalk toward the Earth and began to climb down it, it dried in the sunlight, became brittle, and broke into a zillion little pieces. Theses little pieces became our larkspur. And sometimes some myths are better than others.

Some Native American tribes called this plant sleep-root, and gave it to whomever they were sitting around with for a night of gambling. It dulled the senses of the person on the other side of the dice.

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