A classical myth ties the larkspur, like the hyacinth, to the blood of the hero Ajax: when he killed himself in shame after the arms of Achilles were awarded to Odysseus, a flower was said to spring from his blood bearing on its petals the letters of his grief. In folk practice larkspur was a protective flower, held to guard against ghosts, scorpions and venomous creatures and to preserve against the evil eye, and it was strewn or hung for that purpose. As the birth-flower of July and in the language of flowers it stood for lightness, levity and an open heart. Beauty, a hero's blood, and protection against the unseen gather to a poisonous blue spike.
Classical scholars have long debated which real flower the Greek myths of the blood-flower actually describe, since the plant later called hyacinth by botanists, Hyacinthus orientalis, does not carry the markings the ancient poets describe, leading some to argue that the Greek hyacinthos named a different flower altogether, possibly a wild iris, gladiolus or larkspur relative, so that larkspur's own claim to the story sits within a wider, genuinely unresolved argument about which modern flower, if any, the ancient sources meant. The confusion is a useful reminder that a great deal of classical plant-naming was done by poets rather than botanists, and that a name recorded in verse two and a half thousand years ago cannot always be pinned with confidence to a single species growing today.