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What flower was named for an athlete?

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Hyacinthus was the youngest son of the King of Sparta and Diomede. He was an athletic youth admired and loved by the Greek gods. Apollo, the sun god, and Zephyrus, the god of the west wind, often came to participate in sports and games with the boy.

One day, Apollo and Hyacinthus were tossing and catching a discus when Zephyrus arrived. In a jealous fit, Zephyrus caused a sudden wind.
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The discus rebounded and hit Hyacinthus in the head. The youth died in the arms of Apollo.

The legend as told by Bulfinchs Mythology (1968) quotes Apollo, "Thou diest, Hyacinth, robbed of thy youth by me. Thine is the suffering, mine the crime. Would that I could die for thee! But since that may not be, thou shalt live with me in memory and in song. My lyre shall celebrate thee, my song shall tell thy fate, and thou shalt become a flower inscribed with my regrets."

No one is certain of what flower the legend implied, but taxonomists assigned Hyacinthus to the garden hyacinth. Leonhard Schmitz, in A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1902), added this clue to the legend of the hyacinth, "From the blood of Hyacinthus there sprang the flower of the same name, on the leaves (petals?) of which there appeared the exclamation of woe AI, AI, or the letter Y (upsilon), being the (Greek) initial of Hyacinthus."

It was once believed the bluebell was the hyacinth of the Greek legend. Simply to keep legends straight, the bluebell's old botanical name, Hyacinthus non-scripta, means "hyacinth without writing".

ARKive has photographs of the Hyacinthoides non-scripta (Hyacinthus non-scripta). To view the photographs, click on the link:

Click here to view the photographs

Click on photograph to enlarge the picture and click on the thumbnails on the right to view all images.

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