A flowering plant with long, slender leaves and clustered pale flowers, native to Mediterranean regions and often mentioned in ancient literature.
From Greek 'asphodelos,' possibly derived from a pre-Greek Mediterranean language. The plant appears frequently in Homer and other ancient texts as a flower of the underworld and the Elysian Fields.
Ancient Greeks believed asphodels grew in the Fields of Asphodel, the part of the underworld where ordinary people went—making this humble flower one of literature's most famous symbols of the afterlife.
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