"I don't think you should take relationship advice from members of the species Bellis perennis."
He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me…
A character plucks something in order to predict something.
The character is usually a girl, but doesn't have to be.
This trope comes in two flavors:
- Standard: the character plucks petals from a flower — usually a daisy — in order to determine whether a certain someone loves him or her.
- Variations:
- It's not a flower (but maybe it looks like one... or maybe not).
- The options are not "loves me" and "loves me not", but something else.
As humans are more inclined to start with the affirmative (in this case "Loves me"), and since Real Life flowers are slightly more likely to have an odd number of petals, probability indicates that of all the people who did this the majority of them ended with "Loves me". In the land of fiction though, the Rule of Drama skews this and fictional characters tend to end with "Loves me not".
Examples:
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Standard
Anime & Manga
- In episode 9 of The Brave Express Might Gaine, Sally played the standard with her only daisy left of her entire bouquet. But her fortune was heading to a "Loves Me Not" outcome, until Might (unknowingly) shoots off the second-to-last petal during the most critical moment in battle, giving her the "Loves Me" result.
- Ran Mouri does this to a dandelion in one of the ending songs in Case Closed. She pauses just as she gets to the last petal and frowns, presumably getting a 'Loves Me Not' outcome. Luckily, Conan goes to her just in time to give her a whole bouquet of dandelions.
- At one point in Digimon Adventure 02, Daisuke spaces out after his crush Hikari angrily tells him that she can't stand people like him, imagining a flower being plucked with a "She loves me, she hates me..." recital. The vision ends with the flower disintegrating and a wail of "She hates meeeee!"
- In the original Japanese version, Hikari was only doing one thing as she plucked: saying "Hate...hate...hate..."
- A drunken Ayu tries this with a crab in Honey and Clover, causing Takuto to start, "Ayu!! With a crab you need to start with 'loves me not!!'
- Chapter 83 of Kaguya-sama: Love Is War shows the tail end of Shirogane doing this after a period of Kaguya avoiding him. It tips off his little sister Kei that he has a crush, though she doesn't find out that it's specifically Kaguya that he's pining over at the time.
- In the first chapter of Sakura Trick, Haruka thought of playing this with Yuu's floral hair decs as "something special" to do to keep their friendship special. Yuu was not pleased.
Asian Animation
- Flower Angel: In Season 1 episode 13, An'an picks the petals off a flower to see if Wangke loves her back. She ends with "he doesn't like me", so she and Qianhan keep looking for flowers to pick to see if she gets a different result. They all turn up with "he doesn't like me".
- At some point in episode 49 of Happy Heroes, Doctor H. plucks the petals off of a flower to predict whether Miss Peach loves him. Whether he lands on "loves me" or "loves me not" is never shown or mentioned.
Comic Books
- Deconstructed in The Smurfs, of all places. One smurf was doing the routine, and ends up with "Loves Me Not". Another smurf asks him about his luck and he replies, gesturing to the now barren flower field that "Yeah, I can't find one that has an odd number of petals!"
- And there's another time that, as a joke, two Smurfs take petals from the flowers to ensure the one doing the routine always gets "Loves Me not".
- The Joker does this in his short lived series with the posy on his jacket, in regards to his new Villainous Crush on Dinah Lance. A few petals in he just starts saying "She loves me!" with each one.
Comic Strips
- In U.S. Acres, a worm disguise himself as a flower. Orson, mistaking it for a real flower, picks it and starts plucking the petals.
- In Garfield, Jon attempts to predict an unidentified woman's feelings about him. He's doing it wrong, however, plucking one petal for every iteration instead of every time one of the possibilities is listed. Also, the "loves me not" end of the spectrum keeps getting more and more extreme...
Fan Works
- Erika the Radical: After watching yet another girl confess her feelings to her love interest, a heartbroken Leila Rou is seen plucking flower petals for Erika Itsumi to this trope, while getting a "loves-me-not" last petal, fourteen flowers in a row.
Films — Animation
- The Little Mermaid: Ariel does it with a flower-like sea plant.
Films — Live-Action
- Batman & Robin: Poison Ivy plucks a flower's petals during her captivity in Arkham Asylum while mentioning "loves me, loves me not", which really raises questions considering her self-proclaimed role as the defender of all plant life. In a twist, she doesn't finish the plucking, because Mr. Freeze appears (while completing the "loves me not" part of the phrase) in front of her.
- In Popeye, Bluto does this at the engagement party, soon upgrading it to "She'll marry me". Every time he gets a negative, he inflicts violence on whoever happens to be nearby. When he's on the last petal, it's going to be "Won't", but he's distracted before he can pluck it.
Bluto: Now, where was I?
Castor Oyl: Oh! She won't marry you...
Bluto: (Plucks petal) She will! - In The Producers, this sets up a bilingual joke in the Show Within a Show:
Eva Braun (holding a flower): Er liebt mich, er liebt mich nicht, er liebt mich, er liebt mich nicht. (To Hitler) Du liebst mir nicht!
Adolf Hitler: Hey, man... I lieb ya, I lieb ya, baby, I lieb ya. Now lieb me alone! - Waiting for her boyfriend to return from looking for a missing kid, Betsy in Madman pulls off petals from a paper flower, going through the "he loves me, he loves me not" routine. She's happy when she ends with "loves me" on the last petal.
- Tracy does this with a flower while she and James Bond are on their honeymoon in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Just before the Mood Whiplash sets in...
Literature
- In Dr. Seuss's posthumously published Daisy-Head Mayzie, Mayzie leaves her family and friends behind for a life of fame and fortune, but eventually realizes it's Lonely at the Top. When she doesn't dare go home because she's sure that no one loves her anymore after she abandoned them, the daisy growing out of her head (the reason for her fame) plucks its own petals one by one to find out if they love her. It turns out that they do.
Live-Action TV
- Hannah Montana episode "Good Golly, Miss Dolly":
Miley Stewart: He loves me. He loves me not and now I need more petals!
- One scene in the Friends episode "The One With The Two Parts Part 2" has Joey picking the petals off a flower while thinking about Phoebe's sister Ursula.
- Finn from Glee exactly does this in "I Do". While Rachel, the girl in question, was standing right in front of him, and he was giving her a speech about how their relationship is like a seed - between the "She loves me"s and "She loves me not"s. While seemingly drunk. The last petal left on the flower is a "Loves me" one (but he doesn't say it, we just know because the second-to-last petal was a "Loves me not" one). Rachel picks it herself.
Music
- This image is invoked in the chorus of "Partner in Crime" by Lucy Dacus. Given that the song is about her lying about her age to appeal to older men, this emphasizes that she is still at heart a child, with a naive view of love.
Picking petals to see if you will be mine
Do you love me? Do you love me not?
Theater
- Guys and Dolls uses this in the dance routine for "A Bushel And A Peck."
- It's performed by Gretchen in Faust: First Part of the Tragedy, which was written back in 1808.
Video Games
- Super Mario Bros.:
- Super Mario 64 DS: One of Yoshi's minigames is plucking the petals off a flower. Getting the same result three times in a row results in "Really loves me!" and "Really loves me... not!". There's a rare chance of all the petals falling off at once, which counts as a "Loves me not" but without the "Loves me not" text showing up. All to the theme from the underwater stages of the first game, as played through a music box.
- New Super Mario Bros. makes an actual game out of it by involving two players trying to either get "Loves me", or stick the other guy with "Loves me not" by plucking 1-3 petals per turn.
- Professor Layton and the Last Specter: One of the puzzles involves a young man who bought three flowers from a florist to predict with: one for the standard question, one for happy or unhappy, and one for the gift to give his sweetheart. Your job is to pick the set of flowers that give the best result for him. The prediction for the gift is to buy her a bouquet. The puzzle solution notes: "It seems reasonable that a florist would want the man to buy another bouquet right?"
- Ib has a couple of female characters who like doing this with the male character Garry's rose. It'd be a perfectly innocuous activity if roses didn't symbolize health in this game...
- Grim Fandango's Big Bad Hector is shown doing this in his greenhouse when finally confronted by Manny. Keep in mind that in this game flowers are a symbol of death (or rather, being Deader than Dead), and come from souls that have been destroyed, so what Hector is doing is creepy.
Hector: She loves me... She loves me not...
Manny: Well, you're half right. - Long Live the Queen: In week 3, Charlotte and Elodie's interaction:
Charlotte: He loves me, he loves me not...
Elodie: Lottie, do you have a boyfriend?
Charlotte: Not really, I just like to play with the flowers.
Web Animation
- Marzipan's debut in Homestar Runner was in a game based on this trope. It always results in "She loves me not", before another petal spontaneously grows.
Webcomics
- Matt from Hodges Pond does this very frequently.
- Port Sherry: "Respect the process": A girl is plucking petals and lands on "Loves me not". She tries again with another flower, but the flowers protest.
Flower: You already know you are not loved!
- Sandra from Sandra and Woo takes a practical approach to the odd-even problem, but her friend Larisa doesn't approve of her shenanigans. Sandra's boyfriend Cloud thinks that members of the species Bellis perennis give bad relationship advice anyway.
- In Scandinavia and the World, England did this in a strip released around the voting of Scotland's independence. He encounters a double petal and wonders whether it's a yes or no.
Western Animation
- The Amazing World of Gumball: In "The Flower", when Leslie escapes Jealousy's deathtrap and arrives in the cafeteria, The possessed Gumball brutalized him by ripping his petals shouting "SHE LOVES ME! SHE LOVES YOU NOT!" over and over again, forcing Darwin and Penny to restrain him, realizing that gumball is not acting like himself.
- In Johnny Bravo, Johnny does this... with Four Leaf Clovers, always beginning with "loves me". He makes a huge mound of leaves behind him.
- Link does this at the start of the The Legend of Zelda (1989) episode "Stinging A Stinger". He ends up with a "loves me not" and blames the flower.
- In Dr. Seuss' story, 'Daisy-Head Mayzie', the title character does this with the Daisy on her head, but to determine if her family and friends, who she missed, loves her or not.
- In You're in Love, Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown does this to determine whether The Little Red-Haired Girl loves him. But right before he can pull the last one (which would have confirmed that she does), Linus points out the reality that picking apart a flower doesn't officially confirm whether one loves him.
- In one episode of Miraculous Ladybug, Cat Noir asks Ladybug (who sorely underestimates how much he really cares for her) out for a rooftop dinner with him, which she neither declines nor accepts. That night, he has everything planned out, but she doesn't show. He starts blowing out candles, variating between "she loves me" and "she loves me not." He looks completely devastated when he gets to the last candle and he's on "she loves me not."
- In The Smurfs (1981) episode "The Three Smurfketeers", both Smurfette and Clumsy do this - Smurfette by picking the petals off the flower, and Clumsy by counting the falling petals.
- In The Triplets and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar is plucking petals from a daisy. When he finally gets "she loves me", the Bored Witch makes one more petal appear, changing the result to "she loves me not".
Variations
Advertising
- One McDonalds ad has a girl doing the routine with french fries. She ends up with "loves me not". Then the boy in question comes over and offers one of his own fries.
Anime & Manga
- In Ouran High School Host Club, upon finding out that Haruhi is a Sweet Polly Oliver, Kasanoda says, "I like her...I love her...I like her...I love her..." instead of allowing for the standard other possibility.
- Azumanga Daioh has Kaorin pulling the petals off a flower to determine whether she would be in the same class as Sakaki for second year (but the more conventional question is definitely in the subtext). The first flower yields a negative, but before she can pull the last petal, Yukari gives her another flower they she can start over with. The same thing happens, except it's Mr. Kimura who offers the flower (to the horror of both Kaorin and Yukari). A pile of stems and petals later, Kaorin decided to just go ahead and look at the roster. Sakaki and Kaorin are in the same class. Oh, and she had a Freak Out when the first and second flower yield negatives.
- Nishizawa in Hayate the Combat Butler did the standard version with a piece of corn.
- One episode of Irresponsible Captain Tylor has the crew's fate hinging on Tylor delivering paperwork to an office on time. The crew destroys a mountain of flowers doing this, invariably getting "He won't make it," until one guy just puts his hand over the final petal. He doesn't make it.
- Jaken in Inuyasha, when he can't figure out if Sesshomaru was teasing him or actually testing whether the Tenseiga would cut/kill him, begins plucking flower petals. The last petal is "testing", which he attempts to interrogate Sesshomaru over when he returns.
- In Nagasarete Airantou Machi does this with a Voodoo Doll. When she got "Ikuto won't come" she says it was practice and tries again. Later Ikuto finds her with the entire room flooded with used voodoo dolls.
- In Ranma ½, Ryoga wonders if Akane will come visit him while he's at home. He starts pulling out all the strings in a mop, saying:
Ryoga: She's coming... She's not coming... She's coming... She's not coming...
- In Sailor Moon Super S, (in episode 164, in the original version) CereCere plucks petals of a flower trying to predict if she and her sisters can escape or not. Later in the same episode, Zirconia trapped them and were draining their energy. Sailor Mercury told they had to break their Amazon stones and be set free. CereCere used a flower again to determine if to break their stones or not, the last petal saying to break them. They all did and they were free from the energy trap.
- In Sakura Trick Haruka considers doing this with Yuu's flower hair decorations. Yuu is... unamused.
- Itoh in Homunculus, in a variant, plucks flower petals with the options "man" and "woman".
Comic Books
- In one of the Asterix movies, Obelix does this, but with a faintly-remembered variation.
- Black Moon Chronicles: Ghorgor Bey plays it with the man responsible for the murder and imprisonment of Ghorgor's adopted family, replacing the petals with the man's limbs and using the French version where there are four increasingly intense "I love you"s.
"I hate you! A little, a lot, passionately, madly- not at all!"
- The EC Comics story "Gee, Dad... It's a Daisy!" ends with Plant Aliens saying this while dismembering a human.
Comic Strips
- In Mutts, Mooch gets "loves me" and wants to do it again. So Earl informs him they are out of — three-leafed clovers.
Fan Works
- The Stronger Evil: Drago first meets Nataline as he tries to find the flower with Earth Demon chi in the flower shop and already shown signs of having a Villainous Crush. Angered by his arrogance and flirting, the demon hunter tries to slice the half-demon with her katana, and he presents two flowers to her while quipping "Chi loves me… chi loves me not!" as she slices them in half.
Films — Animation
- Denahi prances around throwing flowers in Brother Bear. To be fair, he's being sarcastic.
- Fiona in the first Shrek film does this with a sunflower Shrek left at her doorstop, but to decide whether she should tell Shrek her deep, Dark Secret: "I tell him, I tell him not..." She plucks the last petal on a "I tell him!" but the sun rises just then and she returns to human form before she can find Shrek.
Films — Live-Action
- The Three Stooges did this... with hair:
- In Calling All Curs, a 1939 movie, Dr. Curly plucks Moe's eyebrows while chanting the usual version for female love interests.
- In I'm A Monkey's Uncle, Moe says the same whilst pulling Larry's hair out in his sleep.
- In Bringing Up Baby (1938), Susan counts it out on the toes of one foot. She should know in advance that it will come out to "He loves me," but she still seems surprised and excited when it does.
- In The Green Goblin's Last Stand, Gwen is introduced playing "he loves me, he loves me not" with a flower before changing it to guessing whether or not Peter will be there at all.
- In One Hour with You (1932), André plucks a flower to choose between these two options: "If I go inside, my wife sees me note and I get into trouble" versus "If I go to the garden to Mitzi note , I get into trouble too, but anyhow, I get my tie fixed." Needless to say, it takes him a while to get through the process.
- Screamers: The Hunting. Hannah is doing this as a Madness Mantra while the object of her infatuation is loading bullets into a magazine and she's sharpening her blade. Later she sees him talking to The Squadette and finishes, "He loves me not..."
- In Morozko (aka Jack Frost, a Russo-Finnish production that appeared on Mystery Science Theater 3000), a group of bandits waiting to ambush the hero Ivan sit around chanting, "We will rob them, we won't rob them, we will eat them, we won't eat them, we will beat them, we'll be beaten..." while one of them picks petals off a flower.
Literature
- "Odd Attachment", a short story by Iain M. Banks, has a plant-alien doing this with something he just found. It's a human astronaut.
Live-Action TV
- Some music channels invite people to text in their names and the names of their love interests. A random number, usually a percentage, is then assigned to each pair, and a comment is made indicating whether or not it means the pair will live Happily Ever After. One Polish TV example has an animated graphic of a flower with its petals flying off.
- Lady Illusion does this with Ace in Ace Lightning - by throwing energy bombs at him, with Ace answering with "he loves you not" by returning fire - until he blows her back into a live power conductor and drags her off again, saving her. Lady Illusion finishes with a rather surprised "...He Loves Me."
- One episode of The Cat in The Hat had the Grinch replace the common phrasing with "I hate them" and "I like them not."
Music
- The iconography is invoked, and the phrase subverted, in Dream's "He Loves You Not." The singer tells a woman sniffing after her boyfriend that she can flirt as much as she likes, the boyfriend won't be tempted—"he loves me, he loves you not."
Pulling petals off a flower trying to get your way
Keep pulling til' it says what you wanna say
Girl, you can pick a field full of daisies
But he'd still be my baby - The song "Loves Me Not" by t.A.T.u. uses the exact phrase, but with a bit of a twist; the phrase is used both for a love interest ("he loves me, he loves me not") and for a dear friend ("she loves me, she loves me not"), with the focus of the song being on having to choose between the two.
Video Games
- WarioWare: Touched! has a microgame based around this concept called "No Love for You", where the player has to pluck all the petals off of a flower within the given time limit. On the first level of difficulty, the flower is replaced with a four-leaf clover.
- Fire Emblem: Awakening:
- Sumia does this in order to predict whether she'll survive the next battle. She claims that they give her confidence, and if she ends up with a bad fortune, she just repeats it until she gets a good fortune. If she's Chrom's wife, when Chrom had a heart-to-heart talk with their future daughter Lucina, Sumia attempts to assure herself that Chrom is not cheating on her by doing this instead.
- Sumia's daughter Cynthia also does the same, except she uses it to choose which Dramatic Entrance she should do for the next battle.
- In Puyo Puyo Tetris, the Dark Prince gets upset over Arle (his Villainous Crush) and Carbuncle (Arle's pet) blaming him for the chaos happening, and he's seen at the beginning of one cutscene repeating to himself "I'll forgive them... I'll forgive them not". Ringo sees him and comments on how he's "butchering those flower petals".
- In Total War: Warhammer II, during the introduction of the Dark Elf campaign, Evil Sorceress Morathi briefly amuses herself by killing random slaves with calls of "you live, you die". Her son, Malekith, scolds her for playing petty games during the auspicious celestial event that begins the plot.
Webcomics
- In chapter 3 of Black Haze, Shic, in his debut appearance, is doing this with the leaves on a branch, replacing the standard "he loves me, he loves me not" with "he'll come, he won't come," referring to the Black Magician Blow.
Western Animation
- Parodied in Arthur:
Buster: She loves me, they love me, I love me. Ah, isn't love lovely? Who doesn't love love?Flower: I don't!Buster: Aah!Flower: How would you like to have your petals plucked?
- On U.S. Acres, The Worm once disguised himself as a flower to escape Booker, only to be picked and plucked by Roy, however he may have been just messing with the Worm cause he had a intentionally mischievous look on his face. There was five petals on the flower costume but Roy purposely skipped the fourth petal plucking it and said 'loves me not' plucking the fifth one.
- Minnie's introductory scene in Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers has her pulling apart a flower...saying "He loves me...he loves me a lot."
- The Fairly Oddparents Valentine's Day special has Tootie doing a heartbroken version of this because of Timmy's refusal to accept her as his Valentine. Meanwhile, Trixie Tang does a mocking version.
Tootie: He loves me not, he loves me not...
Trixie: I love him not, I love him not... - Ed, Edd n Eddy: In an episode where the Eds attempt to use reverse psychology to scare the Kanker Sisters away, Double D is seen pulling apart a flower saying "She loves me, she loves me also."
- Despite Helga's love for Arnold in Hey Arnold!, she does a very sinister version of this with a flower she picks on the school grounds after feeling like Arnold is acting as if she doesn't exist (handing other girls their umbrellas, slamming a door in her face, helping others with carrying heavy items...)
- Jackie Chan Adventures: During "Black and White and Chi All Over", Drago looks for the flower that holds the Earth Demon Chi in the flower shop and quips "Chi loves me. Chi loves me not." as he inspects two wrong flowers.
- My Little Pony:
- My Little Pony 'n Friends: In "The End of Flutter Valley: Part 6", Draggle does this with several flowers regarding her mother, also saying "she hates me, she hates me not".
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "The Ticket Master", Twilight Sparkle uses a flower trying to work out which of her friends should get the other Grand Galloping Gala ticket. After one round, she gives up. And eats the petals.
- On Jimmy Two-Shoes, Jimmy does this under the influence of a love sweater.
- During the episode "Olaf In Love" of the 2010 version of Pound Puppies, Olaf plucks a flower after his date goes badly.
Olaf: She hates me, she loves me not...
- The Ren & Stimpy Show: In "Terminal Stimpy", Stimpy, who is currently in denial over his impending death, picks the petals saying "I am not dying, I am not going to die."
- In The Crumpets episode "Girls On Holiday", Ms. McBrisk, who is wildly fascinated with a fake man known as "Lonesome Wolf" in a dating service, plucks the feathers of a poor bird while surrounded by other birds and wearing yellow fins.
Ms. McBrisk: [laughs] Big bad wolf, he loves me, he loves me not. He loves me [throws bird] ah!
- House of Mouse: In "Super Goof", Goofy, who thinks Clarabelle isn't into him, sits outside the club and repeats to himself "She loves me not" while eating peanuts.
- Recess: In "That Stinking Feeling," when Spinelli has lost her tough reputation because of her embarrassing crush on Johnny V., she plucks a daisy saying "I hate him... I hate him more..."
- School for Vampires: Sunshine is seen doing this in "Zoo Time", however instead of an actual flower she's clicking and dragging on a virtual flower program on her computer.
- Angela Anaconda: Gordy Rhinehart does this at the start of the episode "Cyrano d'Angela", saying, "She doesn't love me... she loves me not..."
