the.com/cornflower
a weed so charming Egyptians buried pharaohs with it and Prussians made it a national crush
means A slender wildflower with intensely blue, frilled blossoms (Centaurea cyanus) that once grew as a weed in grain fields, and the vivid sky-blue color named after it.
from Exactly what it says on the tin: a flower of the corn — but 'corn' here is the old British sense meaning any cereal grain, especially wheat, not American maize. The plant earned its name by springing up among the stalks in grainfields, a beautiful nuisance to farmers. Its Latin species name, cyanus, comes from the Greek 'kyanos,' meaning dark blue — the same root that gives us 'cyan.'
- royal blue
- its color literally named the crayon shade cornflower
- farm refugee
- nearly extinct in Britain from herbicides and tidy fields
- edible petals
- sprinkled on salads for color, faintly clove-like taste
- tut's tomb
- wreaths of it found with Tutankhamun's remains
- prussian symbol
- Kaiser Wilhelm's favorite, later a German nationalist emblem
cornflower blue — pantone color 17-1564, official royal air force shade since 1920
centaurea cyanus — wild flower native to europe, nearly extinct in uk by 1950s due to herbicides