Hilda sank into a chair by the open window, pulled a flower abstractedly from the vase at her side, and began picking it to pieces, floret after floret, with twitching fingers.
"Hilda Wade A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose"
Grant Allen
The crest an anchor winged, I think it is, and the motto too tedious: "Regio floret, patrocinio commercium, commercioque Regnum."
"Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete Transcribed From The Shorthand Manuscript In The Pepysian Library Magdalene College Cambridge By The Rev. Mynors Bright"
Samuel Pepys Commentator: Lord Braybrooke
And at another time he saw Joyce deliberately count her blade before beginning, and nip off a floret, and then begin; and the end was "Plowman."
"Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard"
Eleanor Farjeon