Cornflower medicine

March full moon musing

The day that I first saw you
With your eyes of cornflower blue
Love filled my heart forever
With your lovely cornflower hue

Time passes as it travels
We got married as lovers do
I swam a life of bliss
In pools of cornflower blue

Now old and frail
We still sit together
Just as old folks do

But when the sunlight
streams upon you
I see jewelled eyes
that sparkle.
In beautiful
cornflower blue.

~ Jude Kyrie

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Spring draws near even as the snow clings to the thawing ground. With this comes garden preparations, plans and dreams. Every year I experiment with new herbs and flowers, inviting them in, seeing which enjoy it here. Then there are the plants that I must have year after year, engraining themselves into land and spirit.

One of these plants for me, is the common cornflower (Centaurea cyanus), also known as bachelor’s button. It grew wild in the hayfields of old Europe. The wildly popular “Blue Boy” variety displays a bright sapphire hue in bouquets and arrangements. While blue is the original color of the undomesticated cornflower, many shades from pink to burgundy have also been bred into this species.

There are some plants that trickle into many different parts of our human lives. They flow easily from the medicine cabinet to the kitchen, bouquets and beyond. These plants demonstrate how tightly interwoven our ancestors were with the earth to have included them in so many aspects of their daily lives.