chroniques d’une fraise

Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys
Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;
Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet
Clear of the grave.
- Excerpt from Hamatreya, Ralph Waldo Emerson

This is a flower from one of my cyclamens. I’ve had four cyclamen plants for three years now, managing to hibernate them successfully in summer. It’s always a pleasure to see them return to life in winter and enjoy their blossoms throughout the cold months.

My Larousse etymology book and the American Heritage Dictionary entry for cyclamen note that cyclamen, Latin, comes from the Greek kuklaminos, from kuklos, circle. The dictionary theorizes it may be due to the bulbous roots. Methinks it’s a bit more obvious than that (and to be very pedantic, a cyclamen bulb is spherical, not circular).

This entry was posted on Sunday 3 February 2008 at 14:19 and is filed under Flowers, Meta, Photoblogging, Quotes. You can follow any comments on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.