Laburnum musical instruments. In addition to such wind instruments as recorders and flutes, it was a popular wood for Great Highland Bagpipes before taste turned to imported dense tropical hardwoods such as "Brya ebenus" (cocus wood), ebony, and "Dalbergia melanoxylon" (African monkeywood). The heart-wood of a laburnum may be used as a substitute for ebony or rosewood. It is very hard and a dark chocolate brown, with a butter-yellow sapwood. "Laburnum" species and hybrids are cultivated as ornamental trees for gardens and parks. They are also trained as espaliers on pergolas, for ceilings of pendant flowers in season. In its natural
Flowers Are Red original version is excerpted. The song tells the story of a little boy who on the first day of school started drawing pictures of flowers using many different colors. The teacher (sung by Chapin in a falsetto voice) tells him that he should not be coloring because it is not time for art, and in any case, the boy is coloring the flowers all wrong and that he should paint them red and green, "the way they always have been seen." The boy disagrees and continues to color them from his imagination until the teacher punishes him by standing him