Soldiers of the Flower World

"Sometimes I think of the coltsfoot flowers as brushes, prepared and laid out ready by Nature - whose palette is the sun - for the painting of roadside, hill-bank, and meadow with the yellow of buttercup, celandine, dandelion, cowslip, and charlock. The coltsfoot might in fact be a brush-head that had been dipped in molten gold, and then twisted round so swiftly between the fingers, that every hair of the brush-head had sprayed itself out stiffly from the centre. But more often I think of those spare straight flowers, standing so erectly at 'attention' upon their leafless stalks, as soldiers who have donned their burnished helmets, while on duty as a guard of honour to welcome the advent of the Queen of Spring, and her consort, the Sun. The soldiers of the flower-world, indeed, they are, the 'markers' or 'single spies' sent on in advance to denote the spot on which the battalions and companies of the oncoming army of Spring and Summer shall form." 

                                                                              ~COULSON KERNAHAN: Dreams Dead Ernest and Half Jest