CORNFLOWER OR BATCHELOR BUTTONS

Cornflower, batchelor button, Centaurea cyanus

If you live in Texas surely you've seen these pretty little blue flowers popping up everywhere. 

Also known as the bachelors button, in folklore, cornflowers were worn by young men in love; if the flower faded too quickly, it was taken as a sign that the man's love was not returned. 

The Latin name, Cyanus, was given the Cornflower after a youthful devotee of the goddess Flora (Cyanus), whose favourite flower it was, and the name of the genus is derived from the Centaur, Chiron, who taught mankind the healing virtue of herbs.

They say that you can make a distilled water from Cornflower petals which was formerly in repute as a remedy for weak eyes. The famous French eyewash, 'Eau de Casse Lunettes,' used to be made from them. 

Cornflower or bachelor's button, is an annual flowering plant in the family Asteraceae native to Europe. In the past, it often grew as a weed in cornfields (in the broad sense of "corn", referring to grains, such as wheat, barley, rye, or oats), hence its name. It is now endangered in its native habitat by agricultural intensification, particularly by over-use of herbicides. However, Centaurea cyanus is now also naturalised in many other parts of the world, including North America and parts of Australia through introduction as an ornamental plant in gardens and as a seed contaminant in crop seeds.. 

Centaurea cyanus

Billeder af nordens flora. v.1

København,G.E.C. Gad's forlag,1917-1927.

Lindman, CAM, Bilder ur Nordens Flora

Bilder Nordens Fl.

biodiversitylibrary.org/page/10459192

http://plantillustrations.org/species.php?id_taxon=0&genus=Centaurea&id_species=217941&species=&mobile=0&size=0&uhd=0&SID=04r42au0r0cbtpk5ajcd8d9o4v&lay_out=0&group=0&hd=0&query_type=genus&thumbnails_selectable=0&query_broad_or_restricted=broad

http://plantillustrations.org/illustration.php?id_illustration=131263&mobile=0

Left border, bachelor's button plant inhabited by dragonfly.
Artist, Jean Bourdichon, ca. 1518.

Book of Hours

France, Tours, ca. 1515

MS M.732 fol. 10v

Written and illuminated in Tours, France, probably 1518.

Decoration: 8 full-page miniatures, 96 text pages bordered with flowers, fruits, and various plants, each identified by name in Latin and French.

Artists: Jean Bourdichon and an anonymous mid-sixteenth-century Italian illuminator who painted the Madruzzo arms and emblems on fols. 2v, 3r, 61r, 61v.

Bourdichon's full page illustrations and botanical borders are very close to his work in the Hours of Anne de Bretagne (Paris, Bibliothéque)queen.

In left border, bachelor's button plant inhabited by dragonfly.
Plant identified in Latin by rubric IACEA NIGRA in upper margin and in French by label HUILLETZ DE PRE below plant.

Huilletz ~ Dianthus carnation

Huilletz blanc - Species tunici Dianthus caryophyllus 

In right border, knapweed plant inhabited by beetle.

Plant identified in Latin by rubric IACEA NIGRA in upper margin and in French by HANON below plant.

1796 CENTAUREA CYANUS 

artist Johannes Zorn (1739 - 1799) 

 Icones Plantarum Medicinalium, Nurnberg. 

 He produced these hand colored copper botanical engravings 

between 1790 and his death in 1799.  

A. Guillaumin, Les Fleurs de Jardins, tome I : Les Fleurs de Printemps,
 Paul Lechevalier, 1929