wine and butter cups
There’s a mini-field of winecups near the Houston Ave exit of east-bound Memorial Drive. They’re very beautiful, round maroon wildflowers. They’re supposed to be native to Texas but this is the first time I’ve seen them in Houston.
Instead, here, I see buttercups. Or – what we called buttercups. Buttercups are yellow, aren’t they? I bet they are. Our version is pink – Texas primroses, actually. I suspect that my childhood peers called them buttercups because the stamens emitted yellow pollen everywhere.
They taught me a little game.
“Hold this flower up to your chin. Now smell it. If your chin turns yellow, that means you like butter. There – yeah. You like butter!”
As a little girl who’d read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and various other British kid-lit involving pastoral things, I couldn’t help but suspect that this was a dilution of some game children had played in England since the beginning of time. Just like poor kids today, little lords and ladies used to play with flowers because they didn’t have video games.
Do you like butter? I do, too. Look up some wildflowers online.
