There is a willow grove ascaunt the brook, That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream. There, with fantastic garlands did she come Of crow flowers, nettles, daisies and long purples That liberal shepherds give a grosser name But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them.[68] [68] "Hamlet"; Act IV, Scene VII. Shakespeare did not select _Ophelia's_ flowers at random. They typified the sorrows of the gentle victim of disappointed love whose end was first madness, then suicide. The crow-flowers signified "fair maiden"; the nettles, "stung to the quick"; the daisies, "her virgin bloom"; and the long purples, "under the cold hand of Death." Thus what Shakespeare intended to convey by this code of flowers was, "A fair maiden, stung to the quick, her virgin bloom in the cold hand of Death." It is generally supposed that the wild blue hyacinth, or harebell (_Scilla nutans_), a flower associated with pure and faithful love, is the crow-flower; and authority is given to this theory in the old ballad, which, of course, Shakespeare knew, called "The Deceased Maiden Lover": Then round the meddowes did she walk Catching each flower by the stalk, Such as within the meddowes grew, As dead man's thumb and harebell blue, And as she pluckt them still cried she, "Alas! there's none ere loved like me." Some critics have objected to the blue harebell because it is a spring flower, and it is midsummer when _Ophelia_ drowns herself. These authorities suggest the Ragged Robin for _Ophelia's_ crow-flower, and others again the buttercup, also called creeping crowfoot (_Ranunculus repens_). Bloom writes: "It is generally assumed that the flowers are those of the meadow and that a moist one. Why? It is equally probable they are those of the shady hedge bank and that the crow-flowers are the poisonous rank _Ranunculus reptans_ and its allies; that the nettles are the ordinary _Urtica dioica_ not necessarily in flower, or if this be objected to on account of the stinging qualities which the distraught _Ophelia_ might not be insensible to, its place could be taken by the white dead nettle _Lamium album L._ The daisies may be moon-daisies and the long purples _Arum masculatum_, another plant of baleful influence, with its mysterious dead white spadix bearing no very far fetched resemblance to a dead man's finger wrapped in its green winding-sheet and whose grosser name, cuckoo-pint, is ready at hand. With this selection we have plants of the same situation flowering at the same time and all more or less baneful in their influence." [Illustration: PLEACHING AND PLASHING, FROM "THE GARDENER'S LABYRINTH"] [Illustration: SMALL ENCLOSED GARDEN, FROM "THE GARDENER'S LABYRINTH"] The crow has given its name to many flowers. There are, indeed, more plants named for the crow than for any other bird: crowfoot, crow-toes, crow-bells (for daffodil and bluebells) crow-berry, crow-garlick, crow-leeks, crow-needles, and many others.