Cornflower - le Bleuet Latin Centaurea cyanea - and les Jacées.
The British are accustomed to the notion of the poppy as the flower of Remembrance. The remembrance, that is, of the huge numbers of soldiers slain on the fields of Flanders. It bloomed in long banks of red on those blood stained fields. More than thirty million artificial poppies are sold before November 11th and no self-aware politician would be seen without one. Not so in France..
Here it is the Bleuet which takes this place but not nearly with the power of the poppy.
It was in 1916 that two Frenchwomen , a nurse Mme Lenhardt, and the daughter of the governor of Les Invalides, deeply moved by the terrible wounds of the soldiers in the war then in full course, decided to make artificial bleuet flowers and sell them to raise funds.. This flower recalled the colour of the uniform of the first French soldiers, which was (almost unbelievable now) blue. They were called les bleuets. Moreover ever since the Revolution, blue has been considered the National colour. After World War II millions were sold each year by the organisation Le Bleuet de France to raise funds not only just before Armistice day (November 11th) but also on 8th May (end of the WWII in Europe).
Yet in ten years I have not seen these being sold and a French friend tells me that she has not noticed them being sold for many years, at least where she has lived, even in the suburbs of Paris. Others may (must?) have different experiences. Some reader will no doubt tell me of hundreds sold in their town?
All this seems more appropriate to discuss in November, but it is in summer that you will see this glorious flower..
Ths bleuet is the cornflower. It grows, as its name suggests, in the cornfields. It is now uncommon in Britain, where use of selective weed killers in the cereal crops has eliminated it in most areas. In France,at least in my region, the farmers have small fields of mixed cereals which are grown to provide winter food for the poultry and ducks. They do not use weed-killers and in consequence they are bright both with swathes of coquelicots the scarlet poppies- and the bleuets. These beautiful flowers are all annuals and must grow from seed each year, taking advantage of the open soil between the young corn plants to grow, flower, and seed again.
The flower is closely related to the wayside plants called knapweeds or hardheads (in French considered as varieties of jacées). The true jacée has a similar appearance to the cornflower but is a deep red as are most knapweeds (occasional white ones, and some blue mountain species occur.) The true jacée was never common in
Britain and is now extinct there. The knapweeds are generally perennials or biennials and thereby have not the more precarious life of the cornflower. The commonest species do not have the spreading outer florets, seen spectacularly in the bleuet and in the purest form of the jacée . All have flower heads with a ball shaped base which is very hard, even resisting the indentation of a finger nail thus the hard heads.