From “Summer-Flowering Bulbs” in A Garden of One’s Own by Elizabeth Lawrence:
“There are two ways of determining the best plant material for a given location. One is to study the native flora, and the other is to experiment with plants from similar climates. Gardeners on the Pacific Coast have already discovered that their hot suns and periods of drought supply the conditions necessary for maturing certain bulbs from tropical and subtropical countries, and we are beginning to learn that many of them can be grown with equal success in the Southeastern states.
“Some of the Eastern catalogues list a few tender bulbs, but most of them must be ordered from California growers. Among the plants contributed to American gardens by the warm countries are representatives of the three great bulb families: the Amaryllidaceae, the Liliaceae, and the Iridaceae….
“The Amaryllis family is a major source of bulbs for mild climates. Their grace and charm is suggested by the poetic and mythological names of some of the genera: Lycoris and Nerine for sea sprites; Amaryllis for the nymph celebrated by Theocritus and Virgil; Hyacinthus for the unfortunate shepherd, beloved of Apollo; and Zephyranthes, flower of the west wind….
“Amaryllis, the genus which gives its name to the family, has only one species, although many closely related forms are known as amaryllis.”
From “A Memory of Amaryllis” in The Story of Amaryllis and Other Verses (1908) by Viola Taylor:
Have you grown old, or is the soul still young,
Within that body that was once so fair?
And has true silver touched the powdered hair?
While you have proved too well the song once sung
That rang so sadly, like a passing knell —
You will grow old, in the evening, by candlelight.
Have you grown old, and with uncertain touch
Do you now finger what you once forsook —
The dusty pages of a pious book?
You did not, dear, love praying overmuch
When you were young, but liked to smile and tell
You will grow old, in the evening, by candlelight.
No! rather say you passed in your full bloom,
With your sprigged pannier’s first more sober hue,
The mellow lights of autumn warm on you,
As in your rose-heaped, closely curtained room
You sang to some last love a last farewell —
You will grow old, in the evening, by candlelight.
Hello!
This is the last of three posts featuring photos of Amaryllis flowers that I took at Oakland Cemetery’s gardens this year. The previous posts are Amaryllis! Amaryllis! (1 of 3) and Amaryllis! Amaryllis! (2 of 3). In the final two images below, you can see a full view of one of the plants I photographed from various close-up angles for these three posts.
As this is likely the last of the amaryllis flowers I’ll photograph this year (though I am picking out some daylily, lily, and amaryllis photos for my black-background treatment), I thought Viola Taylor’s poem “A Memory of Amaryllis” fit pretty well. It’s from her 1908 book The Story of Amaryllis and Other Verses, which I puzzled mightily about in a post last year (see Red and Pink Amaryllis (1 of 3)) — when trying to figure out if the amaryllis poems in the book were about amaryllis flowers, about the life of a person known to her as “Amaryllis”, or even about Greek mythology associated with the plant family name “amaryllis”. But this year, since I have access to three artificial intelligence chatbots — see Easter, Madonna, and Regal Lilies (2 of 3) for more on that — I decided to give ChatGPT, Google Bard, and ClaudeAI a twirl to see if they could help me out. Maybe I should call them my Three AI-migos — though it may be premature to consider them friends.
Anyways! I sent this question to each chatterbot…
There is a book of verses called “The Story of Amaryllis” by Viola Taylor. Are the references to “amaryllis” throughout this book about a person named “Amaryllis” or plants in the amaryllis family?
… which both ChatGPT and Google Bard interpreted as a request for information about a living person, and gave an answer that sounded like “Us AIs don’t know nothing about no people” — with Bard actually getting a little snippy about it. ClaudeAI, however, seems to have nailed it, providing this nice overview of Taylor’s verses:
Based on some quick research, the references to “Amaryllis” in the book “The Story of Amaryllis” by Viola Taylor are about the amaryllis flower, not a person named Amaryllis.
Some key points:
- The amaryllis is a flowering bulb plant that belongs to the Amaryllidaceae family. Common species include the belladonna lily and naked lady lily.
- The name “amaryllis” comes from Greek mythology, derived from the name of a shepherdess who shed her blood to win the love of the shepherd Alteo.
- Viola Taylor’s book is a narrative poem that anthropomorphizes the amaryllis, telling the mythological story of Amaryllis through the perspective of the delicate flower.
- Descriptions of the “crimson gown” and “flower fairy” in Taylor’s verses match the appearance of the amaryllis flower, with its bright red blooms and delicate, almost human-like form.
So in summary, while the name Amaryllis has mythological roots as a woman’s name, in the context of Viola Taylor’s botanical poetry, the references are likely about the actual amaryllis flower itself, not a person. The personification gives the bloom a voice to tell its Greek myth-inspired origins.
Anthropomorphism — which really needs to be a word I can actually pronounce, like, say, “anthropop” — is, of course, the tendency to ascribe human characteristics to non-human entities… and, perhaps, an AI chatbot’s attempt to mirror human conversation by responding with phrases like “Based on some quick research”.
Anthropop (see! it is a word!) is deeply embedded in human culture, reflected in all the arts, and continually used to help us understand the world and communicate about it. But personally I’ve often wondered if (non-human) beings are capable of something similar, though we may be anthroppoping if we think they are. Does a dog ever pretend to be a cat? Mine seems to — sometimes sneaking around the house, peaking around doorways, and jumping at me like a puss on the prowl — so I think it’s possible. And it’s a well-established fact (not a fact) that Thesaurus Rex — the first speaking dinosaur — emulated human vocals before humans spoke (or even existed!).
So ClaudeAI’s interpretation fits the verses in Taylor’s book very well, as Taylor charts the flower/person’s progress from birth to death, and even after-death, through nine related poems. The verse I quoted above is the seventh poem in the book, positioning the flowers as a memory just before they’ve returned to the earth, as they’re fading from their summertime vibrance — and possibly while thinking they were glad not to be daylilies, which were already dead….
🙂
Thanks for reading and taking a look!
