The trees and flowers associated with the crucifixion are widely represented, and have given rise to many a pretty legend.  Several plants are said to owe their dark-stained blossoms to the blood-drops which trickled from the cross; amongst these being the wood-sorrel, the spotted persicaria, the arum, the purple orchis, which is known in Cheshire as “Gethsemane,” and the red anemone, which has been termed the “blood-drops of Christ.”  A Flemish legend, too, accounts in the same way for the crimson-spotted leaves of the rood-selken.  The plant which has gained the unenviable notoriety of supplying the crown of thorns has been variously stated as the boxthorn, the bramble, the buckthorns, [14] and barberry, while Mr. Conway quotes an old tradition, which tells how the drops of blood that fell from the crown of thorns, composed of the rose-briar, fell to the ground and blossomed to roses. [15] Some again maintain that the wild hyssop was employed, and one plant which was specially signalled out in olden times is the auberpine or white-thorn.  In Germany holly is Christ-thorn, and according to an Eastern tradition it was the prickly rush, but as Mr. King [16] remarks, “the belief of the East has been tolerably constant to what was possibly the real plant employed, the nabk (Zizyphus spina-Christi), a species of buckthorn.”  The negroes of the West Indies say that, “a branch of the cashew tree was used, and that in consequence one of the bright golden petals of the flower became black and blood-stained.”

Then again, according to a Swedish legend, the dwarf birch tree afforded the rod with which Christ was scourged, which accounts for its stunted appearance; while another legend tells us it was the willow with its drooping branches.  Rubens, together with the earlier Italian painters, depict the reed-mace [17] or bulrush (Typha latifolia) as the rod given to Him to carry; a plant still put by Catholics into the hands of statues of Christ.  But in Poland, where the plant is difficult to procure, “the flower-stalk of the leek is substituted.”

The mournful tree which formed the wood of the cross has always been a disputed question, and given rise to a host of curious legends.  According to Sir John Maundeville, it was composed of cedar, cypress, palm, and olive, while some have instituted in the place of the two latter the pine and the box; the notion being that those four woods represented the four quarters of the globe.  Foremost amongst the other trees to which this distinction has been assigned, are the aspen, poplar, oak, elder, and mistletoe.  Hence is explained the gloomy shivering of the aspen leaf, the trembling of the poplar, and the popular antipathy to utilising elder twigs for fagots.  But it is probable that the respect paid to the elder “has its roots in the old heathenism of the north,” and to this day, in Denmark, it is said to be protected by “a being called the elder-mother,” so that it is not safe to damage it in any way. [18]