What are “wild plums and agrimony?”?
“Wild Plums and Agrimony are flowers. In the song I reference a Victorian dictionary of flowers, which explains that different flowers represent different things. Wild Plums represent independence, and Agrimony represents thankfulness and gratitude. In the song, Freud misdiagnoses Rose as a hysterical woman. Rose is a misunderstood individual, so she is begging for these flowers, obvious symbols of the qualities that she possesses, but qualities that are ignored by the doctor. Rose is a subtle and emotionally substantial person, but she’s being pigeonholed as a crazy person. She needs something to represent these traits for her, since Freud can’t see them in her. He talks down to her and doesn’t take her seriously, and she’s frustrated. That’s why she says, ‘I bet you don’t even know what that means.’ A man as smart as Freud should know the symbolic meaning of something as simple as a flower, but inside, she knows that he’s ignorant in some ways – his eyes are not open, even though he
