Flower for the Day Hyacinth 3-16-26

This weekend the hyacinths (Hyacinthus orientalist) exploded. They are fragrant spring blooming perennials in the 

Asparagaceae family. The name comes from Greek mythology:  Hyacinth was killed by Zephyrus, the god of the west wind, jealous of his love for Apollo. He then transformed the drops of Hyacinth's blood into flowers.

Hyacinthus grows from bulbs, each producing around 4-6 narrow untoothed leaves and 1-3 spikes or racemes of flowers. Cultivars of H. orientalis have dense flower spikes and are generally very robust.

The hyacinth appears in the first section of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land during a conversation between the narrator and the "hyacinth girl" that takes place in the spring.

You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
"They called me the hyacinth girl."
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.