Forget-me-not
The forget-me-not's meaning is its name: "forget me not", or in Charlotte de La Tour's French "remember me; do not forget me". American and later English books added "true love".
Meaning
La Tour's chapter on the myosotis is headed Souvenez-vous de moi, ne m'oubliez pas. She describes the finest she had seen, along a stream near Luxembourg that the villagers called the Fairies' Bath. The English version of her book gives the name a German origin, and Henrietta Dumont's Floral Offering (Philadelphia, 1851) repeats its story almost word for word: a young couple walking by the Danube on the eve of their wedding saw the flowers carried off by the stream; the man plunged in to fetch them, threw them to her on the bank as he went under, and cried "Vergiss mein nicht!" Sarah Josepha Hale's Flora's Interpreter (Boston, 1832) gives "true love", and so does Kate Greenaway's Language of Flowers (1884), which lists "true love; forget me not". The dictionaries are a finished fashion rather than a living tradition.
Origin and history
The name is older than the flower that carries it. Richard Folkard's Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics (1884) says "forget-me-not" was given to several plants. For more than two centuries it was the English, French and Dutch name of the ground pine, from the middle of the fifteenth century until 1821, because of the nasty taste it leaves in the mouth. In the age of chivalry a flower whose identity is unknown, called "Souveigne vous de moy", was worked into collars. German botanists began giving the name to the water forget-me-not, Myosotis palustris, as early as the sixteenth century.
Which flower was Hale's?
Hale's entry shows how loose the names were. Her forget-me-not is described as "a species of the Violet common to America", blue in colour, not a myosotis at all. The Violet had meanings of its own in the same book.
See also
Violet, Red rose, White rose, Yellow rose, Pink rose, Lily.
Sources
- Le Langage des fleurs (Charlotte de La Tour, 13th edition), Charlotte de La Tour, Le Langage des fleurs, treizième édition augmentée (Paris: Garnier frères, [1856]); first published 1819, Cornell University Library, via the Internet Archive, Myosotis; Dictionnaire
- The Language of Flowers: The Floral Offering, by Henrietta Dumont, 1851, H. C. Peck & Theo. Bliss, Philadelphia (Project Gutenberg edition), Forget-me-not chapter
- Flora's Interpreter (Sarah Josepha Hale, 1832), Sarah Josepha Hale, Flora's Interpreter, or the American Book of Flowers and Sentiments (Boston: Marsh, Capen and Lyon, 1832), Boston Public Library, via the Internet Archive, Forget-me-not
- Language of Flowers, illustrated by Kate Greenaway, 1884, George Routledge and Sons (Project Gutenberg edition), Forget Me Not
- Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics (Richard Folkard, 1884), Richard Folkard, Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics (London: Sampson Low, 1884), Project Gutenberg, Forget-me-not
- The Language of Flowers, with Illustrative Poetry, by Frederic Shoberl, seventh edition, 1840, Saunders & Otley, London (Internet Archive, Cornell University Library copy), Forget-me-not
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Last reviewed September 29, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research