Amaranth
…the
day gone by,
Silence and sleep like fields
Of amaranth lie.
Walter de la Mare, All That’s Past
Immortality. Unfading love, Faith.
An imaginary flower reputed never to fade; a fadeless flower (as a poetic conception). Also attrib.
1616 DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN in Farr S.P. (1848) 285 Vpon her head shee ware Of amaranthes a crowne. c1630 Wks. 1711, 17/1 Th' immortal amaranthus. 1637 MILTON Lycidas 149 Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed. 1667 P.L. III. 353 Thir Crowns inwove with Amarant and Gold, Immortal Amarant. 1815 SOUTHEY in Q. Rev. XIII. 274 His laurels are entwined with the amaranths of righteousness. 1827 KEBLE Chr. Y. St. Barn., The genial amarant wreath to wear.
2. A genus of ornamental plants (Amarantus, family Amarantaceć) with coloured foliage, of which the Prince's Feather and Love-lies-bleeding are species.
1551 TURNER Herbal 22 Amaranthus of Pliny..is rather a purple eare then a floure. 1579 LANGHAM Gard. Health (1633) 258 The hearbe called purple veluet flower, or Amaranthus. 1596 SPENSER F.Q. III. vi. 45 Sad Amaranthus, in whose purple gore Me seemes I see Amintas wretched fate. 1626 BACON Sylva §512 (R.) Some Plants Blood-Red, Stalke and Leafe, and all; as Amaranthus. 1725 BRADLEY Fam. Dict., Amaranthus, Flower Gentle, called by some, Princes Feathers. 1794 MARTYN Rousseau's Bot. xvi. 207 The Crested Amaranth..is commonly called Cock's-comb. 1847 LINDLEY Veg. Kingd. (ed. 2) 510 Amaranths grow in crowds or singly.
Besides its common name, by which it is best known by the florists of our days, it is called Flower Gentle... the flowers are not properly flowers, but tuffs, very beautiful to behold, but of no smel, of reddish colour... It is under the dominion of Saturn and is an excellent qualifier of the unruly actions and passions of Venus... the flowers, dried and beaten into powder, stop the terms in women, and so do almost all other red things. And by the icon, or image of every herb, the ancients at first found out their virtues... The flowers stop all fluxes of blood; whether in man or woman, bleeding either at the nose or wound. There is also a sort of Amaranthus that bears a white flower, which stops the whites in women, and the running of the reins in men, and is a most gallant antivenereal, and a singular remedy for the French pox.
Nicholas Culpeper, Complete Herbal