dice box butterfly flower

          __/)
       .-(__(=:
    |\ |    \)
    \ ||
     \||
      \|
       |       ,

Good morning, beautiful. Some breezy flora/fauna on the menu today.

Read a kinda underwhelming Denise Levertov poem a few weeks ago called “Fritillary”. But I was piqued by the word, which she rather thoroughly defines and even offers some etymology for:

A chequered lily, fritillary, named for a dicebox, shall be our emblem

and the butterfly so like it one would see a loose petal blowing if it flew over where the flowers grew.

A field flower but rare, chequered dark and light,

and its winged semblance lapsing from sky to earth,

fritillary, a chance word speaking of glancing shadows, of flying fluttering delights, to be

our talisman in sorrow.

Kicker kinda comes outta nowhere, no??

To recap, a fritillary is either a really beautiful checkered flower:

Source

Source Source

Or a really beautiful checkered butterfly:

Source Source Source

The word derives from a really beautiful Roman object called a “fritillus”, a dice box in the shape of a rectangular prism or a cylinder for playing games. They were generally metallic with cool designs and type cut out of them in order to make the rattling louder and more festive (Yahtzee!) and allegedly ensured a fair throw.

Here’s Sidonius, a Roman aristocrat visiting friends in Gaul around 461 AD, observing the spirited games of country life:

“From the first moment we were hurried from one pleasure to another. Hardly had we entered the vestibule of either house when we saw two opposed pairs of partners in the ball-game repeating each other's movements as they turned in wheeling circles; in another place one heard the rattle of dice boxes and the shouts of the contending players; in yet another, were books in abundance ready to your hand.”

This is probably the most famous one out there:

Source

The inscription celebrates the defeat of the Picts (“painted” (tattooed, probably) ones). But this old jacked up one is far cooler:

Anywho not sure if this is at all interesting, but as an OC native, I know where my interest comes from.

Have a lovely weekend and hope you see some checkered beauties out there. :P

love,
alex

PS: I’m not sure a fritillary qualifies as a wildflower per se, but looking for them did lead me to this wonderful web 1.0 resource: wildflowersearch.org. Helped me identify the gorgeous yellow flowers (California brittlebush) lighting up the hills by my mom’s house in OC.

ʕ　·ᴥ·ʔ SOON — a Thai artist who lectured corpses about death!! (and the greatest living sculptor of Climax, NY??) ...... and ...... more????