A legend tells when the Creator thought he had finished giving the flowers their colours, he heard one whisper "Forget me not!" There was nothing left but a very small amount of blue, but the forget-me-not was delighted to wear such a light blue shade. Wimpy legend from Wikipedia
The first time I saw forget-me-nots was in my mother-in-laws vegetable garden. They came up every year on their own, making a delightful blue counterpoint to vegetables. Their happy pale blue is not lost in the green of summer and perks up the scene.
When I bumped into this Burt's seed packet I remembered those and I remembered a few charming but odd postcards from turn of the 20th century I once had, one of forget-me-not filled baskets being hauled around by chickens!
This card has the grumpy chick look I remembered from my all cards. Many more strange and charming cards are at the bottom of this post.
In a quick search I only found one ad that mentions a specific variety a century ago. While it is a hybrid, I think it counts as they wanted a long period of bloom rather than a new looking flower. It is hard to improve on the original flower, Other ads just say they have forget-me-nots.
One more legend.
An 1869 article about forget-me-nots fills us in on their popular history.
TABLE TALK.
THE turquoise is truly a lovely gem; yet how inferior is it in beauty to what Coleridge calls " Hope's gentle gem, the sweet forget-me-not." The blue of its first cousins, the brooklime, speedwell or "bird's-eye,"—members of the graceful Veronica family—is also one of those lovely blues that are, this season, among the fashionable colours ; but its hue among gems would match it with the lapis-lazuli and not with the turquoise.
Forget-me-nots formed the trimming to the blue dress worn by the Princess of Wales at the state ball on July 2nd, and forget-me-nots were also in her head-dress. Out-of-doors they were in full season ; and Ihad seen large turquoise masses of them within a few yards of the very spot where the lovely Queen of Scots had bared her neck to the stroke of death in the banquet-hall of Fotheringhay. But I have never seen the forget-me-not in more luxuriant beauty than in that river in which the poet Cowper was wont to bathe, and whose sinuous course he has celebrated in his poetic descriptions—the river Ouse. Not only on this river's banks, but marking the tracks of all its tributary streams, are such clumps and beds of forget-me-nots as I have never seen surpassed in fineness of flower and purity of colour ; and even every little ditch in the vicinity of the river is glorified by the same wealth of natural gems.
Some say that the forget-me-not will improve on cultivation ; but I have found that the plants removed carefully from the brink of the Ouse, although they flourish in the garden, are not covered with such fine blossoms. Nevertheless, as it is a free grower, and will take other trimming than that above alluded to in connection with ladies' dress, it is a very useful plant for the garden, and can be used to great advantage in a ribbon-border. I have seen miles of it so used in the gardens of Lord S , where its turquoise tint had no rival even amid the myriad hues around.
Old Gerarde made the flower to be both useful and ornamental; for he says that it is a " remedy agaynst the stinging of scorpions." We may, however, content ourselves with its present loveliness and popular name, whatever its past history may have been in flower folk-lore. Mills, in his Origin of Chivalry, has assigned its choice as a token-flower to our own Henry of Lancaster, who, for a tender motive, wore the forget-menot on his collar of SS. ; but the German legend concerning the flower will probably continue to flourish in poetry, notwithstanding varieties in the version, and minor discrepancies in the tale. Thus, one version accounts for the knight being swept away by the stream as he was gathering the turquoise flowers, by saying that he was heavily clad in armour. But among those who have made poems out of this legend is our own Bishop Mant; and I think that he has skilfully accounted for all difficulties by representing the lady as seeing the forget-me-nots gemming a small island fixed in the midst of a rapid river, which, in his endeavours to re-cross, overpowers the knight's strength.
Then the blossoms blue to the bank he threw,
Ere he sank in the eddying tide ;
And "Lady, I'm gone, thine own knight true,—
Forget me not!" he cried.
Upon which she cherished the fatal flower, and gave it the name of "Forget-me-not," which certainly sounds much prettier than its proper botanical title of the Mouse-ear Scorpion-grass, Myosotis palustris.
Good old Ebay did not fail me when I looked for more postcards.
The next are from my flowered transportation
collection. On land and sea and in the air the forget-me-not has been called upon to decorate these whimsical conveyances. My favorites here are the hot air balloons...who knew that Father Xmas used them when the reindeer were out of order!
Hardworking accountants? I think this is an Easter card as Bockpece means Risen.
These are the tidiest jelly beans you are ever going to see.
