A Rose By Any Other Name...

Ailz has an app on her phone which identifies flowers. You square up to the flower as if you were taking its picture and the app gives you its name. She was walking round the garden on Friday identifying everything she came across. It turns out the things I was calling marigolds are really wall flowers. I knew that actually; I'd just forgotten.

When she came to the pansies the app gave her a list of their many traditional names- most of which are prettier or at least more graphic than "pansy". "Johnny Jump-up", for instance. Somewhere down the bottom of the list was "Love-in-Idleness". So pansy is the flower that Puck uses to enchant the lovers in A Midsummer Night's Dream! Well I never did! I suspect this is yet another thing I once knew but had forgotten.