What it says
The asphodel speaks of memory and regret. It is the flower of those no longer here — not heroes, not the damned, but the vast majority of the dead, whose lives merited neither glory nor torment.
Homer's asphodel meadow is among the most melancholy images of antiquity: a grey place, without pain and without joy, where one simply continues to exist.
The plant
A tall upright spike, up to a metre and a half, bearing white flowers with a brown midrib, opening from the bottom up. It grows on poor, overgrazed, degraded ground around the Mediterranean.
It is in fact an indicator: where asphodel dominates a heath, the soil is exhausted. Livestock will not eat it, which leaves it space once everything else has been grazed.
A flower the Greeks associated with death, thriving exactly where the land has stopped feeding anyone. The symbolism and the botany say the same thing.
Its uses
The tubers served in times of famine, after long cooking. In Sardinia the dried stems were used for baskets and hives. Today it interests beekeepers most: it flowers early and yields abundant nectar.
our piece on flower symbolism places the asphodel among the flowers of memory.