Lincoln and flowers

[Eva Elisabeth]

(07-16-2020 11:08 PM)Steve Whitlock Wrote:  

(07-16-2020 09:43 PM)Rob Wick Wrote:  Thank you Eva. That pretty much answers my question.

Best
Rob

And yet, Mr Lincoln is supposed to have said:

“Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.”

― Abraham Lincoln
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Did Abraham Lincoln have a favorite flower?
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August 06, 2009 9:10PM

He loved tulips.
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I have no information for any affinity for tulips by Mr Lincoln. Eva's post seems pretty conclusive, but I thought I'd mention those 2 things anyway.

If the thistle quote attributed to Lincoln is proven, I don't think he was actually referring to a flower, except as a metaphor. Perhaps the thistle is an errant thought and the flower a productive thought that might blossom. If so, then Mr Lincoln's favorite flower might reasonably be a useful thought.

I doubt he had seen many tulips prior to his presidency (and not that much time during his presidency). I was wondering when at all the tulip spread in the US - well, Jefferson obviously grew some, but I doubt many people in the US got to see tulips in the first half of the 19th century.
http://www.highplainsgardening.com/tulip...ulbmasters

[Donna McCreary]

(07-17-2020 03:54 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  

(07-16-2020 11:08 PM)Steve Whitlock Wrote:  

(07-16-2020 09:43 PM)Rob Wick Wrote:  Thank you Eva. That pretty much answers my question.

Best
Rob

And yet, Mr Lincoln is supposed to have said:

“Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.”

― Abraham Lincoln
***************
A web-site called Answers has the following, unsupported best guess:

Did Abraham Lincoln have a favorite flower?
789
Answer
Top Answer
User Avatar
Wiki User
August 06, 2009 9:10PM

He loved tulips.
*****************
I have no information for any affinity for tulips by Mr Lincoln. Eva's post seems pretty conclusive, but I thought I'd mention those 2 things anyway.

If the thistle quote attributed to Lincoln is proven, I don't think he was actually referring to a flower, except as a metaphor. Perhaps the thistle is an errant thought and the flower a productive thought that might blossom. If so, then Mr Lincoln's favorite flower might reasonably be a useful thought.

I doubt he had seen many tulips prior to his presidency (and not that much time during his presidency). I was wondering when at all the tulip spread in the US - well, Jefferson obviously grew some, but I doubt many people in the US got to see tulips in the first half of the 19th century.
http://www.highplainsgardening.com/tulip...ulbmasters

Years ago, I visited the International Friendship Garden in Michigan City, Indiana. (Now the Friendship Botanic Gardens). When this series of gardens was being developed in 1936, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands donated 200,000 tulips. It was my understanding that tulips became popular throughout the US afterwards.

[David Lockmiller]

(07-17-2020 11:38 AM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  

(07-17-2020 04:19 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Joshua Speed is the source of this quote. Speed wrote to William Herndon on January 12, 1866, and reported that Lincoln had said this to him.

Speed reported Lincoln said, “Speed die when I may I want it said of me by those who know me best to say that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.”

SOURCE: pp. 157-158 of Herndon's Informants.

In February 1865, Joshua Speed witnessed a touching scene in which the president granted the requests of not only two Pennsylvania women for the release of their kinsmen imprisoned for draft dodging but also ordered the release of all conscription evaders in western Pennsylvania.

After the women had gone, Lincoln told Speed: “That scene which you witnessed is the only thing that I have done today which has given me any pleasure. I have in that made two people happy. . . . Speed, die when I may I want it said of me by those who knew me best to say that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.”

(Source: Lincoln’s Last Months, William C. Harris, (2009), page 65.)

With the fall of Richmond, Seward told [James] Speed, "the Southern people would feel as though the world had come to an end." At such moments, history suggested, desperate men might be prompted to take desperate action, and "the President, being the most marked man on the Federal side, was the most liable to attack." Aware that Mary had invited Speed to join her two days later on a return trip to City Point, Seward begged him to "warn the President of the danger." (Team of Rivals, page 718.)

As the River Queen steamed toward Washington on Sunday, "the conversation," Chambrun recalled, "dwelt upon literary subjects." Holding "a beautiful quarto copy of Shakespeare in his hands," Lincoln read several passages form Macbeth, including the king's pained tribute to the murdered Duncan:

Duncan is in his grave;
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well.
Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
Can touch him further.

Lincoln read the lines slowly, marveling "how true a description of the murderer that one was; when, the dark deed achieved, its tortured perpetrator came to envy the sleep of his victim," and when he finished, "he read over again the same scene." Lincoln's ominous selection prompted James Speed to deliver Seward's warning about the increased threat upon his life. "He stopped me at once," Speed recalled, "saying, he had rather be dead than to live in continual dread." Moreover, he considered it essential "that the people know I come among them without fear."

(Team of Rivals, page 723.)

[David Lockmiller]

(07-14-2020 01:54 PM)Steve Wrote:  I don't know if this is going to be of any help but one of Herndon's informants, Elizabeth Crawford, gave him a list of wildflowers that grew in Spencer Co:


https://books.google.com/books?id=s2gilc...22&f=false

At the last, just before making the following post, I found out that the hyperlink could be expanded to include what I retyped below from another source, Herndon's Informants.

The flower listing is somewhat incomplete as shown on the hyperlink. Elizabeth Crawford added the following “cultivated” flowers to the list of flowers:

Now I will give you the names of some of the garden flowers that was cultivated in this country by the first settlers, or nearly so, say in 1824 – 26, and on for several years, some of them till this time [May 3, 1866, date of the letter]. The sweet pink, the poppy, the marigold, the larkspur, the forget-me-not (she actually wrote “techmenot,” as in touch-me-not, I believe), the “pritty by night,” the lady in the green, the sword lily - the flower been the hollyhock, the bachelor’s buttens – those buttens the girls use to string and hang them up in their houses for an ornament; thay ware verry* pritty, as thay war white . . . .

* Note: For a long time, Lincoln misspelled the word “verry” this same way.