Folklore Friday: purple lace & queer flowers

plant folklore of my own creation (plus a fairy tale announcement!)

Hi, friends. Usually I take inspiration for Folklore Friday poem from, you know, actual folklore that’s been around for a century or two, but today I’m frolicking off the beaten path.

Like many a fantasy and fairy tale writer, I like to make things up. Enter: my very own plant folklore.

Photo by Esteban Castle on Unsplash

I do not have a green thumb. The only plant of mine to survive, a little vine I purchased at the local nursery, is still alive because my spouse transplanted it next to one of the oak tree sisters in our yard. They seem very happy together.

But what I can keep alive is a wealth of imagined flowers and plants, and these like to make their appearances in my books. So here’s two of them.

Purple Lace Plant

I have a png somewhere of the purple lace plant flower herself (those two flowers beneath the book in the above cover art). My computer doesn’t want to find it. Remember when this graphic was a trend on IG? I am pretty happy with this graphic I made, if I may say so. (I may.)

From my first book baby, an upper middle grade fantasy called A Land of Light and Shadow:

Twisted root, purple vein, let this petal heal the pain.

The MC, Princess Ardin, knows that the strange, stone-rimmed hollow beyond the castle must be avoided at all costs, as it is full of the poisonous flower known as purple lace plant. So when she discovers a forgotten story about how this plant used to possess healing properties, and still might be when prepared with the right words spoken over it, she thinks it’s only a story. That is, until her mother becomes so ill that the purple lace plant might be the only thing that can save her.

I had great fun making this up. There is so much lore and myth in ALoLaS, and purple lace plants were the first botanical invention that allowed me to creatively explore magical plant properties.

Also, purple. It’s fitting.

Flower Hearts

“Some people want what we create. But this war doesn’t want us or our flower hearts. It will need us, though, when all those men return home. Sooner or later, people will understand that what they fear and discard is the very thing they need.” Her smile broadened into a grin. “But we create a world for ourselves first.”

-from “Flower Heart”, Flower & Cloak

I wrote ‘Flower Heart’, a short tale about a young ex-soldier trying to make his way in a hostile world, as a parallel for queer and/or neurodiverse people. (There is also an explicit comparison to artists of all stripes.) I didn’t want to come outright and say this in the story because I wanted people to make the connections themselves, but if you want to see those things, they’re definitely there.

Yes, neurodiversity is a unique brain wiring, not a heart condition; but if you’re ND or know someone who is, you know we see the world a little differently, and many of us, contrary to some stereotypes, feel things on a deep, deep level. For many of us, to be alive at all is to be hypersensitive to the world’s beauties and tragedies.

in this harsh world,

may you find a place to rest

may you find those who celebrate

your tender, truest self

whose hearts are as open

as yours.

©Stephanie Ascough 2025.

I ran out of time, so I’ll continue this series of my own plant folklore next month.

Fairy Tale February

If you’re still on Instagram, would you like to join me and Jess Lynn for Fairy Tale February?

You can click on the image below to learn more:

tap this image for all the info

Thanks for reading, friends.

Meet you over the orchard wall.*

*One of my wonderful early readers for my book started signing her emails like this. I like it.

Thanks for being here. My AuDHD brain is a bit scattered and prone to change things last minute, but here in The Purple Vale you can count on reflections on folklore, fairy tales, and the seasons from my little corner of East Tennessee–which is unceded Cherokee and Muscogee land.