The VEGETABLE KINGDOM has furnished its full quota of charges. We have whole trees, as the _oak_, _pine_, _pear-tree_, &c.; parts of trees, as _oak-branches_, and _starved_ (_i.e._ dead) _branches_, trunks of trees, generally raguly or knobbed; leaves, as _laurel_, _fig_, _elm_, _woodbine_, _nettle_, and _holly_; fruit, as _pomegranates_, _apples_, _pears_, _pine-apples_, _grapes_, _acorns_, and _nuts_; flowers, as the _rose_, _lily_, _columbine_, _gilliflower_, &c.; corn, as stalks of wheat and rye, and particularly _garbs_ (Fr. gerbes) or wheatsheaves; to which some add _trefoils_, _quatrefoils_, and _cinquefoils_, and the bearing familiar to all in the arms of France, and called the _Fleur-de-lis_. Respecting the _trefoil_, there can be little doubt, as Mr. Dallaway observes, that it was borrowed from the foliated ornaments of antient coronets, which again were imitations of the natural wreath. The shamrock, which is identical with the trefoil, is the national badge of Ireland. Of the quatre and cinquefoils "almost any conjecture would be weakly supported. Amongst the very early embellishments of Gothic architecture are quatrefoils, at first inserted simply in the heads of windows, between or over the incurvated or elliptical points of the mullions, and afterwards diversified into various ramifications, which were the florid additions to that style."[108] These terms are common to both architecture and heraldry, but from which of the two the other adopted them must remain in doubt. The non-heraldric reader will be surprised to learn that the identity of the _fleur-de-lis_ with the iris or 'royal lily' has ever been called in question; yet it has been doubted, with much reason, whether an ornamented spear-head or sceptre be not the thing intended. The Boke of S. A. informs us that the arms of the king of France were "certainli sende by an awngell from heuyn, that is to say iij flowris in maner of swerdis in a felde of asure, the wich certan armys ware geuyn to the forsayd kyng of fraunce in sygne of euerlasting trowbull, and that he and his successaries all way with bataill and swereddys (swords) shulde be punyshid!" Those who imagine the bearing to be a play upon the royal name of Loys or Louis decide in favour of the flower. Upton calls it '=flos gladioli=.'[109] Perhaps it was made a flower for the purpose of assimilating it to the English rose; certainly all our associations, historical and poetical, would tell in favour of its being such; and such it was undoubtedly understood to be in the time of Chaucer, who says of Sire Thopas, "Upon his crest he bare a tour (tower), And therein stiked a _lily flour_."