No one wants to be remembered as a fool.

In a fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson, a sunbeam entices a snowdrop bulb to come out during the winter. A drop of rain, the rays of the sun, and a “tingling and tickling” (leading to a need to stretch) encouraged this flower to emerge early.

So it did surface, but quickly questioned the decision. “It was bitingly cold, and the days that followed didn’t bring a sunbeam. It was weather to freeze such a delicate little flower to bits.”

The flower, however, did not freeze because “there was more strength in it than even it realized.” That, and a few unique adaptations. The snowdrop’s leaves have hardened tips to break through frozen soil and snow, and a special compound in the flower’s sap prevents ice crystals from forming in its cells.

In the story, the wind and weather teased the chilly flower, taunting, “The Sunbeam has hoaxed you! Now make the best of it, you snowdrop, summer fool!”

The snowdrop was not the only fool in the fairy tale. Anderson introduces the historic Danish poet Ambrosius Stub who, he claims, “is well worth knowing.” 

Anderson makes these comparisons between snowdrops and Stub: “Poor Ambrosius Stub! He was a snowdrop, too, a poet-snowdrop. He was before his time, and therefore he had to face sharp winds and sleet as he passed among the gentlemen of [his home town] Funen; he was like a flower in a water glass, a flower in a valentine; a summer fool, winter fool, full of fun and drollery.”

History was less kind to Stub, who has been described as “famous and somewhat disreputable.” This 18th Century Danish poet never graduated college, squandered his wife’s dowry, lived in poverty, lost his wife and two of his four children, and was fired from his job due to his impregnating a housemaid. While he lived to almost 60, he only saw six of his poems published, though others, including songs, were published after his death.

Despite this, Stub is remembered with a bronze monument and remains remarkable for his so-called “drunkenness, illnesses, and personal crises.”  His life, perhaps, was a fool’s errand.

Snowdrops have a better legacy. They are early risers in the flower world, coming out to delight in the winter. I saw my first snowdrop last week, though mine was not the earliest sighting of this special bloom this year.

To return to Hans Christian Anderson’s tale, the snowdrop in his story was placed in a book of Stub’s poetry. It “felt both honored and delighted to know that it was a marker in the beautiful book of poetry, and that he who had first written and sung about the flower had also been a snowdrop and been mocked in the winter.” It’s a clever and fitting epitaph for both the flower and the poet. The symbolism presented by winter gradually yielding to spring is all around us, in the woods as well as in our backyards, at this time of year, if we just keep our eyes open for it.

Suzan Bellincampi is director of the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary in Edgartown, and author of Martha’s Vineyard: A Field Guide to Island Nature and The Nature of Martha’s Vineyard.