Marigolds

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

• Her eyes, like marigolds, had sheath’d their light,
  And canopied in darkness sweetly lay,
  Till they might open to adorn the day.
  • William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece (1594)

• And winking Mary-buds begin
  To ope their golden eyes.
  • William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (1611), Act II, scene 3. Song, line 25.

• Here's flowers for you:
  Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram:
  The marigold, that goes to bed wi' the sun,
  And with him rises weeping.
  • William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale (c. 1610-11), Act IV, scene 4, line 103.

• Mary-golds, on death beds blowing,
  • William Shakespeare, The Two Noble Kinsmen (1634), Act I, scene 1.

• [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;
  • George Wither, "The Choice"; Flos Florum"

•   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.
  • King Charles I, to Robert Turner, on the Isle of Wight; quoted by Buckner Hollingsworth, Flower Chronicles (1958), pp. 247–248

• 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.
  • John Gay, quoted by Hollingsworth

• 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.
  • Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden (1911), Chapter II
  • Compare: "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary"

• The leafy, sun-warmed countryside of the Ukraine sped past. At the foot of every signal box, the ground was yellow with marigolds. You could smell them even in the train.
  • Konstantin Paustovsky, Story of a Life II: Slow Approach of Thunder (Manya Harari & Michael Duncan, tr., 1964)

• These flowers stink as bad, or worse, than the French Marygolds. . . .
  • William Hanbury, on the African marigold; quoted by Robert L. Crowell, The Lore & Legends of Flowers (1982), p. 69

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)

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.
  • John Cleveland, On Phillis Walking Before Sunrise.

• 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:
  • Henry Constable, Diana (1594), Sonnet IX

• No marigolds yet closed are,
  No shadows great appeare.
  • Robert Herrick, Hesperides (1648), "To Daisies, Not to Shut so Soone"

• Open afresh your round of starry folds,
  Ye ardent marigolds!
  Dry up the moisture from your golden lips.
  • John Keats, "I Stood Tiptoe Upon a Little Hill".

• The sun-observing marigold.
  • Francis Quarles, The School of the Heart, Ode XXX, Stanza 5.

• 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.
  • George Wither, "The Marigold".