These flowers must be relatives. They each have the look of tissue pressed into the shape of a flower, with some daubs of pain on the upper ones. They remind me, as I said in White is for…, Veterans Day Flowers. The things worn on your lapel (when most people had lapels) to show that you contributed to a veterans fund. I haven’t seen any here since I was young, but they are still very popular in England.

How do they manage to get so crinkled? Is it because there is just too much petal for the space allowed? Or is it more complicated than that? The most beautiful things have a tendency to look fake, or so I’ve been told. That’s what my oldest son explained to me when he was seven or eight. He looked across the Klamath River at a stunning display of plants and hills, took a deep breath and said, “It looks fake, doesn’t it?” He meant that as the highest possible compliment.

Well, I said that flowers like these look like tissue pressed into the shape of flowers, which means they must look fake. But fake can be both pejorative and breathtakingly beautiful.