Many a Flower

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Explain meaning of "Full many a flower is born to blush unseen"? Thomas Gray quote - I know that much. But I can't find an explanation of it anywhere on the net.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

I presume it means that "there are many quiet high achievers", right? I don't need it for an essay or anything. Someone said it to me in a particular context just now, and I nodded wisely and Someone said it to me in a particular context just now, and I nodded wisely and pretended I knew what he was on about. Are you sure you want to delete this answer? It's not that there are many "quiet high achievers"; it's that there are many potential high achievers who, because of poverty and social-class prejudice, etc.

To understand it you have to understand the context in which Gray wrote it. Then he meditates of the local graveyard and the dozens of generations of people buried in it. Many of his thoughts are about what a waste it is for people who might have been famous and useful and great to have spent their whole lives in this little town shoveling sheep poop and so forth instead of writing great books or leading armies or something.

The whole poem is very intense and moving. Got this from Goodreads Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear: Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air. Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his fields withstood, Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood. Th' applause of listening senates to command, The threats of pain and ruin to despise, To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, And read their history in a nation's eyes Their lot forbad: Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray; Along the cool sequester'd vale of life They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.

Yet e'en these bones from insult to protect Some frail memorial still erected nigh, With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd, Implores the passing tribute of a sigh. Their name, their years, spelt by th' unletter'd Muse, The place of fame and elegy supply: And many a holy text around she strews, That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one longing lingering look behind? On some fond breast the parting soul relies, Some pious drops the closing eye requires; E'en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries, E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires. For thee, who, mindful of th' unhonour'd dead, Dost in these lines their artless tale relate; If chance, by lonely Contemplation led, Some kindred spirit shall enquire thy fate,— Haply some hoary-headed swain may say, 'Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn Brushing with hasty steps the dews away, To meet the sun upon the upland lawn; 'There at the foot of yonder nodding beech That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high, His listless length at noon-tide would he stretch, And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere; Heaven did a recompense as largely send: In fact, only florists, gardeners, and others who have prolonged, close contact with flowers are likely to be sensitive to pollen from these plants. Most people have little contact with the large, heavy, waxy pollen grains of such flowering plants because this type of pollen is not carried by wind but by insects such as butterflies and bees. While land plants have existed for about million years, the first ones reproduced by a simple adaptation of their aquatic counterparts: In the sea, plants—and some animals—can simply scatter out genetic clones of themselves to float away and grow elsewhere.

This is how early plants reproduced. But plants soon evolved methods of protecting these copies to deal with drying out and other damage which is even more likely on land than in the sea. The protection became the seed , though it had not yet evolved the flower. Early seed-bearing plants include the ginkgo and conifers.

Several groups of extinct gymnosperms, particularly seed ferns , have been proposed as the ancestors of flowering plants but there is no continuous fossil evidence showing exactly how flowers evolved. The apparently sudden appearance of relatively modern flowers in the fossil record posed such a problem for the theory of evolution that it was called an "abominable mystery" by Charles Darwin.

Recently discovered angiosperm fossils such as Archaefructus , along with further discoveries of fossil gymnosperms, suggest how angiosperm characteristics may have been acquired in a series of steps.

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An early fossil of a flowering plant, Archaefructus liaoningensis from China, is dated about million years old. Now, another plant million-year-old Montsechia vidalii , discovered in Spain takes the title of world's oldest flower from Archaefructus sinensis. Recent DNA analysis molecular systematics [23] shows that Amborella trichopoda , found on the Pacific island of New Caledonia, is the only species in the sister group to the rest of the flowering plants, and morphological studies suggest that it has features which may have been characteristic of the earliest flowering plants.

While there is only hard proof of such flowers about million years ago, [25] [26] there is some circumstantial evidence of flowers as much as million years ago.

A chemical used by plants to defend their flowers, oleanane , has been detected in fossil plants that old, including gigantopterids , [27] which evolved at that time and bear many of the traits of modern, flowering plants, though they are not known to be flowering plants themselves, because only their stems and prickles have been found preserved in detail; one of the earliest examples of petrification.

The similarity in leaf and stem structure can be very important, because flowers are genetically just an adaptation of normal leaf and stem components on plants, a combination of genes normally responsible for forming new shoots. The flowers would have tended to grow in a spiral pattern, to be bisexual in plants, this means both male and female parts on the same flower , and to be dominated by the ovary female part. As flowers grew more advanced, some variations developed parts fused together, with a much more specific number and design, and with either specific sexes per flower or plant, or at least "ovary inferior".

The general assumption is that the function of flowers, from the start, was to involve animals in the reproduction process. Pollen can be scattered without bright colors and obvious shapes, which would therefore be a liability, using the plant's resources, unless they provide some other benefit. One proposed reason for the sudden, fully developed appearance of flowers is that they evolved in an isolated setting like an island, or chain of islands, where the plants bearing them were able to develop a highly specialized relationship with some specific animal a wasp, for example , the way many island species develop today.

This symbiotic relationship, with a hypothetical wasp bearing pollen from one plant to another much the way fig wasps do today, could have eventually resulted in both the plant s and their partners developing a high degree of specialization. Island genetics is believed to be a common source of speciation , especially when it comes to radical adaptations which seem to have required inferior transitional forms.

Note that the wasp example is not incidental; bees, apparently evolved specifically for symbiotic plant relationships, are descended from wasps. Likewise, most fruit used in plant reproduction comes from the enlargement of parts of the flower. This fruit is frequently a tool which depends upon animals wishing to eat it, and thus scattering the seeds it contains. While many such symbiotic relationships remain too fragile to survive competition with mainland organisms, flowers proved to be an unusually effective means of production, spreading whatever their actual origin to become the dominant form of land plant life.

Flower evolution continues to the present day; modern flowers have been so profoundly influenced by humans that many of them cannot be pollinated in nature. Many modern, domesticated flowers used to be simple weeds, which only sprouted when the ground was disturbed. Some of them tended to grow with human crops, and the prettiest did not get plucked because of their beauty, developing a dependence upon and special adaptation to human affection.

Many flowering plants reflect as much light as possible within the range of visible wavelengths of the pollinator the plant intends to attract. Flowers that reflect the full range of visible light are generally perceived as white by a human observer.

An important feature of white flowers is that they reflect equally across the visible spectrum. While many flowering plants use white to attract pollinators, the use of color is also widespread even within the same species. Color allows a flowering plant to be more specific about the pollinator it seeks to attract.

The color model used by human color reproduction technology CMYK relies on the modulation of pigments that divide the spectrum into broad areas of absorption. Flowering plants by contrast are able to shift the transition point wavelength between absorption and reflection. If it is assumed that the visual systems of most pollinators view the visible spectrum as circular then it may be said that flowering plants produce color by absorbing the light in one region of the spectrum and reflecting the light in the other region.

With CMYK, color is produced as a function of the amplitude of the broad regions of absorption. Flowering plants by contrast produce color by modifying the frequency or rather wavelength of the light reflected. Most flowers absorb light in the blue to yellow region of the spectrum and reflect light from the green to red region of the spectrum. For many species of flowering plant, it is the transition point that characterizes the color that they produce.

Color may be modulated by shifting the transition point between absorption and reflection and in this way a flowering plant may specify which pollinator it seeks to attract. Some flowering plants also have a limited ability to modulate areas of absorption. This is typically not as precise as control over wavelength.

Humans observers will perceive this as degrees of saturation the amount of white in the color. Many flowers have important symbolic meanings in Western culture. Some of the more common examples include:. Because of their varied and colorful appearance, flowers have long been a favorite subject of visual artists as well. Some of the most celebrated paintings from well-known painters are of flowers, such as Van Gogh 's sunflowers series or Monet 's water lilies. Flowers are also dried, freeze dried and pressed in order to create permanent, three-dimensional pieces of flower art.

Flowers within art are also representative of the female genitalia , [32] as seen in the works of artists such as Georgia O'Keeffe , Imogen Cunningham , Veronica Ruiz de Velasco , and Judy Chicago , and in fact in Asian and western classical art. Many cultures around the world have a marked tendency to associate flowers with femininity. The great variety of delicate and beautiful flowers has inspired the works of numerous poets, especially from the 18th—19th century Romantic era.

Their symbolism in dreams has also been discussed, with possible interpretations including "blossoming potential". The Roman goddess of flowers, gardens, and the season of Spring is Flora. The Greek goddess of spring, flowers and nature is Chloris. In Hindu mythology, flowers have a significant status. Vishnu, one of the three major gods in the Hindu system, is often depicted standing straight on a lotus flower. In modern times, people have sought ways to cultivate, buy, wear, or otherwise be around flowers and blooming plants, partly because of their agreeable appearance and smell.

Around the world, people use flowers to mark important events in their lives:. People therefore grow flowers around their homes, dedicate parts of their living space to flower gardens , pick wildflowers, or buy commercially-grown flowers from florists. Flowers provide less food than other major plant parts seeds , fruits , roots , stems and leaves , but still provide several important vegetables and spices. Flower vegetables include broccoli , cauliflower and artichoke.

The most expensive spice, saffron , consists of dried stigmas of a crocus. Other flower spices are cloves and capers. Hops flowers are used to flavor beer. Marigold flowers are fed to chickens to give their egg yolks a golden yellow color, which consumers find more desirable; dried and ground marigold flowers are also used as a spice and colouring agent in Georgian cuisine. Flowers of the dandelion and elder are often made into wine. Bee pollen , pollen collected from bees, is considered a health food by some people. Honey consists of bee-processed flower nectar and is often named for the type of flower, e.

Hundreds of fresh flowers are edible , but only few are widely marketed as food.

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They are often added to salads as garnishes. Squash blossoms are dipped in breadcrumbs and fried. Some edible flowers include nasturtium , chrysanthemum , carnation , cattail , Japanese honeysuckle , chicory , cornflower , canna , and sunflower. Flowers such as chrysanthemum, rose, jasmine, Japanese honeysuckle, and chamomile, chosen for their fragrance and medicinal properties, are used as tisanes , either mixed with tea or on their own.

Flowers have been used since prehistoric times in funeral rituals: The ancient Greeks , as recorded in Euripides 's play The Phoenician Women , placed a crown of flowers on the head of the deceased; [42] they also covered tombs with wreaths and flower petals.

Flowers were widely used in ancient Egyptian burials, [43] and the Mexicans to this day use flowers prominently in their Day of the Dead celebrations [44] in the same way that their Aztec ancestors did. Quotations related to Flowers at Wikiquote. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Flower disambiguation. For other uses, see Floral disambiguation. Perianth , Sepal , and Corolla flower.

Plant reproductive morphology , Androecium , and Gynoecium. Floral formula and Floral diagram. ABC model of flower development. Human timeline and Nature timeline. Evolution of flowers and Floral biology. This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. January Learn how and when to remove this template message.

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