Cybertronian remembrance flower
Looked back across the ocean, said we're never going home
And our shadows killed the flowers, our footsteps spoiled the land
It seems we're always in the way, no matter where we choose to stand
When life is lost, it is often traditional to mark that loss somehow. One particularly beautiful, and haunting, way is through Cybertronian remembrance flowers, or spark flowers. These blue devices may resemble traditional flowers, but each contains an echo of the spark of the one whose death it commemorates. After millennia of war, and the dwindling of the Cybertronian race, they serve as a reminder, and a lesson, for those who need to be reminded of the cost of endless war.
Fiction
2005 IDW continuity
The Cybertronian Censere, in an attempt to create a record of every Cybertronian lost in the Great War, created the spark flowers to capture the last traces of an individual's spark. On his planet, he would plant each flower by the plinth of the bot who killed them, to create a memorial and to visually quantify the number of deaths on their hands. Megatron's plinth, in particular, was surrounded by a massive sea of flowers, which served as a harrowing reminder of what he'd done before becoming an Autobot. The Not Knowing When he was killed by the Decepticon Justice Division, they mockingly stuffed a flower in his mouth. How Bright Their Frail Deeds Using the energy contained within the flowers, the members of the Lost Light were able to boost the force field surrounding the Necrobot's fortress. The Dying of the Light Part 2: The Sun in Flight
Earthspark cartoon
After the Battle of the Space Bridge and the end of the Transformers' war, the Space Bridge Memorial Park was created to honor those who fell. Within the memorial, an image of the AllSpark was covered in remembrance flowers, one for every life lost during the battle, whether Cybertronian or human. Megatron explained their significance to the young Terrans in an attempt to impart the responsibility they held as the last hope for the Cybertronian race, and not to make the same mistakes he and the Decepticons had. Warzone
Notes
- The endless blue sparkflowers that symbolize the sparks of dead Cybertronians bear close resemblance to the poppy fields of Flanders, where hundreds of thousands of soldiers died during World War I, and to the legend that there are as many flowers as soldiers who died there. Poppies are also used to remember fallen, and veteran, soldiers in Britain and several Commonwealth nations. More Than Meets the Eye #53 gives an explicit nod at the end to the First World War and the memorial poem "In Flanders Fields".
