Last week I went to see “The Odyssey,” which was a fascinating retelling of Homer’s classic poem and story.

Today the term odyssey has come to mean a long and eventful journey. The association of a common flower with the Trojan War made me think of another common flower and those flower’s own odysseys of spreading in multiple directions across both the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.

The traditions and stories of some plants, such as the hyacinths found in local yards, go back to classical mythology and other ancient traditions and have their own odysseys to tell. The hyacinth even has a connection to Homer’s Odyssey itself. The flower is said to have been associated with Achilles and Ajax, Greek heroes of the Trojan War. Hyacinths first appeared in accounts of the Trojan War not in “The Odyssey” but in “The Iliad,” where they were included in the flowers of Hera’s couch. She was the Greek goddess of both heaven and earth. Hyacinths were also mentioned by ancient writers Theophrastus and Dioscorides of Greece and Virgil and Ovid of Rome.

The legend tells that Achilles fell in love with a Trojan princess, much to the displeasure of the god Apollo. Achilles had been unbeatable in battle and appeared to have no weaknesses. As a god, Apollo knew that he was vulnerable, but only to a wound on his heel, and told the Trojan prince Paris how Achilles could be defeated. Then during combat, Paris shot Achilles in his heel with a poison arrow, killing him.

The Greek warrior Ajax recovered Achilles’ body and prized armor and expected that the armor would be awarded to him. The decision of whether Ajax or Odysseus, the king of Ithaca whose name was also spelled as Ulysees, would be awarded Achilles armor was to be made by Agamemnon, the Achaean king.

In one tradition, Ajax had angered the goddess Athena by not being willing to accept her help during the battles at Troy. In “The Odyssey,” it was revealed Athena was the patron of Odysseus. Agamemnon did not want to offend Athena and awarded the armor to Odysseus. Angered by the refusal to give him the armor, Ajax planned to take revenge. Aware of his thoughts, Athena struck him with madness. As a result of his madness, and out of bitterness and humiliation, he committed suicide with his sword. According to Ovid’s account, out of pity for Ajax, Apollo caused a kind of purple hyacinth to arise from the ground where each drop of Ajax’s blood had fallen.

The hyacinth is very common in the Levant stretching from Greece to the Holy Land. During the Dark Ages, hyacinths were probably introduced into Western Europe by Moslem invaders and traders. By the mid-1500s they could be found in gardens from Italy to Holland but were not reported in English gardens until 1596. They probably were brought to America during the late 1700s when many other ornamental bulbs became popular in gardens.

There is another flower that had a journey both long and strange, but one that traveled east first and then back west. That flower is the zinnia, whose blooms are currently gracing the gardens and streetscapes of Columbus. It is native from the southwestern U.S. south to South America but centered in northern Mexico. In its native form, it was a weedy plant with a small single flower usually with yellow, orange or pale lilac petals or rays. In its wild state, it is a perennial of arid landscapes.

The history of the zinnia is a fascinating story. In prehistoric times, there are associations of the zinnia with the Navajo, Apache, Aztec and other Native Americans of the Southwest. Its flower was used to make a yellow dye and was an ingredient in red body paint. The flower was sometimes used in the treatment of stomach and throat ailments. The zinnia was especially tied to the Navajo.

In Navajo legend, yellow zinnias were sent by the “ever-changing-woman,” an almost Mother Nature figure, to help lead a Navajo child, Straight-arrow, in search of a means to prevent the destruction of crops. As the story goes, it is why the Navajo would plant yellow zinnias in their corn fields.

The first Europeans to observe the zinnia were the Spanish conquistadors in Mexico in the 1520s. They did not consider it an attractive flower and called it “mal de ojos” or “sickness of the eye.” However, seeds were carried back to Spain where some interest was shown in this New World flower.

At first, Europeans referred to the zinnia as Crassina or “somewhat coarse.” During the early 1700s, interest in the flower increased in Europe, and in 1759, it was named Zinnia to honor German professor of botany and medicine Johann Zinn who had just died. Then in 1796, a reddish more attractive form of zinnia was carried to Europe. It was this specimen which caused a sensation and captured the attention of gardeners across Europe.

Zinnias increased in popularity across Europe, and by the 1850s both single and double zinnias of many colors were popular in France. In the 1860s, colorful zinnias of purple, orange, red, lavender, yellow and salmon spread across America. Because the center of the zinnia appeared to be a new flower blooming within an older one it became popular in Victorian America to refer to zinnias as “youth and Old Age.” America’s real love affair with zinnias began in the 1920s when most of the modern varieties so popular today were developed. The zinnia, as we know it today, is the result of four centuries of cultivation and breeding.

The stories and long journeys of both hyacinths and zinnias present odysseys taken by two flowers that are popular in Columbus gardens.

Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].

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