Plant of the Day

October 03, 2026

CENTAURY

This flower, the well known Blue-bottle of the cornfields, is fabled to have derived its name from Chiron, a centaur, who is stated to have taught mankind the use of plants and medicinal herbs. According to Pliny, Chiron cured himself with this plant from a wound he had accidentally received from an arrow poisoned with the blood of the hydra. M. Barthelemy writes how, when Anacharsis visited the cave of Chiron, the centaur, on Mount Pelion, he was shown a plant which grew near it, of which he was informed that the leaves were good for the eyes, but that the secret of preparing them was in the hands of only one family, to whom it had been lineally transmitted from Chiron himself.

Mythology has another origin for the Centaurea Cyanus. According to this account, the flower was called Cyanus, after a youth so named, who was so enamoured of Corn-flowers, that his favourite occupation was that of making garlands of them; and he would scarcely ever leave the fields, whilst his favourite blue flowers continued to bloom. So devoted was his admiration, that he always dressed himself in clothes of the same brilliant hue as the flower he loved best. Flora was his goddess, and of all the varied gifts, her Corn-flower was the one he most appreciated. At length he was one day found lying dead in a cornfield, surrounded with the blue Corn-flowers he had gathered: and soon after the catastrophe, the goddess Flora, out of gratitude for the veneration he had for her divinity, transformed his body into the Centaurea Cyanus, the Blue-bottle of English cornfields.

In Lucan’s ‘Pharsalia,’ the Centaury is one of the plants named as being burned with the object of driving away serpents.

“Beyond the farthest tents rich fires they build,
That healthy medicinal odours yield:
There foreign Galbanum dissolving fries,
And crackling flames from humble Wallwort rise;
There Tamarisk, which no green leaf adorns,
And there the spicy Syrian Costos burns:
There Centaury supplies the wholesome flame,
That from Thessalian Chiron takes its name;
The gummy Larch-tree, and the Thapsos there,
Woundwort and Maidenweed perfume the air:
There the long branches of the long-lived Hart,
With Southernwood their odours strong impart,
The monsters of the land, the serpents fell,
Fly far away, and shun the hostile swell.”

The Corn-flower is called in Russia Basilek (the flower of Basil), and attached to it is a legend that a handsome young man of this name was enticed away by a nymph named Russalka, allured into the fields, and transformed into the Corn-flower.

Plants have always been a favourite means of testing the faith of lovers; and the Centaury or Bluet of the cornfields was the flower selected by Margaret as the floral oracle from which to learn the truth respecting Faust.

“There is a flower, a purple flower,
Sown by the wind, nursed by the shower,
O’er which love breathed a powerful spell,
The truth of whispering hope to tell.
Now, gentle flower, I pray thee tell,
If my lover loves me, and loves me well:
So may the fall of the morning dew
Keep the sun from fading thy tender blue.”

The Centaury is known as the Hurt-sickle, because it turns the edges of the reapers’ sickles: its other familiar names are Blue-bottle, Blue-blow, Bluet, and Corn-flower.

It is held by astrologers to be under Saturn.