Towards the end of the fifteenth century a tiny niche was made for the daisy in Christian iconography. It is found almost exclusively in ‘Adorations,’ where it replaces the _lilium candidum_. It was felt that, suitable as the tall austere lily might be to express the Virgin’s purity or the celibacy of the monastic saints, the little wide-eyed daisy was a prettier, sweeter symbol of the perfect innocence of the Divine Child. The jasmine is not strictly a holy flower and has been neglected by the writers on symbolism, but it appears repeatedly in religious art. Its star-shaped blossom seems to be the symbol of divine hope or of heavenly felicity, and it is found with roses and lilies beside the Madonna. It forms the crowns of angels, of saints, and of the Madonna herself. When it is the attribute of the Infant Christ it recalls the Heaven from which He came. The English and Flemish miniaturists add to these the pansy, which is the old herb Trinity,[7] bearing the same meaning as the clover. In the Netherlands and Germany the lily of the valley was also used, with meek purity as its significance. All these flowers, on account of some accident of shape, colour or habit of growth, were considered holy flowers, while others, such as the buttercup, the narcissus, the forget-me-not, were rejected as meaningless. Fruit in general represents good works, or the fruits of the Spirit, faith, hope and peace, and is accounted good; the vine is the emblem of Christ Himself, but the fruit, usually taken to be the apple, which grew on the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, is an accursed thing. There are flowers, too, which are the flowers of evil. The poppy is the emblem of sloth and also dedicated to Venus; the tulip is beloved of necromancers; the black hellebore and the mandrake are used by witches in their spells, though, strangely enough, Conrad von Würtzburg compares the Virgin Mary to the ‘healing mandrake root.’ Also the nettle is the symbol of envy, the hellebore of scandal, and the cyclamen of voluptuousness, for, according to Theophrastus, it was used in the composition of love philtres. As to thorns and briars, Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Anselm are agreed that thorn branches signify the minor sins, and briars (or thistles) those major ones ‘_quæ pungunt conscientiam propriam_,’ etc. Above all the buckthorn is blamed, for of its branches, says Rohault de Fleury, was formed the Crown of Thorns. In art, however, the flowers of evil scarcely appear. The rose is still sometimes the flower of Venus and symbolizes the pomps and vanities of the world, and there are the thorns of sin and death. Some of the early Flemish and German artists painted certain bitter herbs, notably the dandelion, in scenes from the Passion, but Christian iconography has concerned itself chiefly with those plants and flowers which, with the approval of theologians, represent the attributes of the Divinity, of the Virgin Mary and of angels, saints and prophets.