Marigolds

genus of plants
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Marigolds are some 50 species of annual or perennial, mostly herbaceous, flowering plants of the genus Tagetes in the family Asteraceae. The genus Tagetes was described by Carl Linnaeus in 1753. The common name in English, marigold, is derived from Mary's gold, a name first applied to a similar plant native to Europe, Calendula officinalis, of the genus Calendula.

The marigold abroad her leaves doth spread, / Because the sun's and her power is the same.
Open afresh your round of starry folds, / Ye ardent marigolds!
Dry up the moisture from your golden lips.
Delight / That is as wide-eyed as a marigold. ~ Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas
The seeds of Calendula, Marygold, bend up like a hairy caterpillar, with their prickles bridling outwards, and may thus deter some birds or insects from preying upon them. ~ Erasmus Darwin

Quotes

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  • Her eyes, like marigolds, had sheath’d their light,
    And canopied in darkness sweetly lay,
    Till they might open to adorn the day.
  • Mary-golds, on death beds blowing,
  • [T]he Bay, the Marigold’s darling,
    • Sir John Davies, Orchestra (1596, 1622)
  • The Sun doth make the marigold to flourish,
      The Sun’s departure makes it droop again;
    So golden Mary’s sight my joys do nourish,
      But by their absence all my joys are slain.
    The Sun the marigold makes live and die,
    By her the Sun shines brighter, so may I.
    Her smiles do grace the Sun, and light the air,
      Revive my heart, and clear the cloudy sky;
    Her frowns the air make dark, the sun to lower,
      The marigold to close, my heart to die.
      By her the sun, the flower, the air, and I,
      Shine and darken, spread, and close, live and die.
    You are the Sun, you are the golden Mary,
      Passing the sun in brightness, gold in power:
    I am the flower whom you do make to vary;
      Flourish when you smile, droop when you do lower.
    Oh let this heart of gold, sun, and flower,
    Still live, shine, and spring in your heart’s bower.
    • Charles Best, "A Jewel being a Sun shining upon the Marigold, closed in a Heart of Gold, sent to his Mistress, named Mary", Davison’s Poetical Rhapsody (1602)
    • their absence = her absence (3rd and 4th eds.); grace the sun = glad the sun (3rd and 4th eds.)
  • Let who will praise and behold
    The reservèd Marigold;
  •   So shuts the marigold her leaves
        At the departure of the sun;
    • William Browne of Tavistock, "Celadyne’s Song", Britannia's Pastorals, Book III
  • The Marigold observes the Sun
    More than my subjects me have done.
  • This Mary-gold here doth shew
    Mary worth gold lies here below;
    Cut down by death, ye fair'st gilt flour
    Flourish and fade doth in an hour.
    The Mary-gold in sunshine spread
    When cloudie clos'd doth bow the head,
    This orient plant retains its guise
    With splendid Sol to set and rise—
    Ev'n so this Virgin Mary Rose,
    In life soon nipt, in death fresh grows.
    • Inscription on a small tomb in a Devonshire church (1648), quoted by Hollingsworth
  • What flower is that which bears the Virgin's name,
    The richest metal joinèd to the same.
  • Good is ye leaf, so is ye sed,
    To gryndyn and drynky at gret ned,
    It wyll be dronky wt whey or wt ale
    Or wt good reed wyn yat be stale;
    Alle manner veny will it abate
    In manys body early and late.
    • Macer's Herbal (Stockholm, Royal Library, MS.), quoted by Hollingsworth
  • The seeds of Calendula, Marygold, bend up like a hairy caterpillar, with their prickles bridling outwards, and may thus deter some birds or insects from preying upon them.
    • Erasmus Darwin, "The Loves of the Plants", IV, The Botanic Garden (London: J. Johnson, 1791)
  • Our hair with marygolds was wound,
    • William Bell Scott, "The Witch’s Ballad" (1875)
  • The marigold was burning in the marsh
    Like a thing dipt in sunset, ...
    • Alexander Smith, "Scorned"
  •                 [D]elight
      That is as wide-eyed as a marigold.
    • Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas, Impression de Nuit—"The Green River"
  • Mistress Mary, quite contrary,
      How does your garden grow?
    With silver bells, and cockle shells,
      And marigolds all in a row.
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), pp. 494-495.
  • The marigold, whose courtier's face
    Echoes the sun, and doth unlace
    Her at his rise, at his full stop
    Packs and shuts up her gaudy shop.
  • The marigold abroad her leaves doth spread,
    Because the sun's and her power is the same.
  • The Marigold the leaues abroad doth spred,
    Because the sunnes, and her power is the same:
  • No marigolds yet closed are,
    No shadows great appeare.
  • Open afresh your round of starry folds,
    Ye ardent marigolds!
    Dry up the moisture from your golden lips.
  • The sun-observing marigold.
  • Nor shall the marigold unmentioned die,
    Which Acis once found out in Sicily;
    She Phoebus loves, and from him draws his hue,
    And ever keeps his golden beams in view.
    • René Rapin, Of Gardens, translated by Gardiner (1706).
  • When with a serious musing I behold
    The graceful and obsequious marigold,
    How duly every morning she displays
    Her open breast, when Titan spreads his rays.
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