Cybertronian remembrance flower

Here we burn the boats to ashes, after beaching on the shore
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 conflict 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. Each flower was powered by a dozen lives. 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, Team Rodimus was able to boost the force field surrounding the Necrobot's fortress. The Dying of the Light Part 2: The Sun in Flight

After Necroworld had unknowingly been shunted into the Functionist Universe, Nightbeat performed an autopsy on a flower dedicated to Starscream's victims. When he tried to boast about this to Brainstorm, the unimpressed scientist pointed out that the Necrobot had kept a comprehensive database regarding the flowers. A World Misplaced Anode would later use Lug's memorial flower and a piece of sentio metallico to bring her back to life. This Machine Kills Fascists

Earthspark cartoon

After the Battle of the Spacebridge and the end of the Transformers' war, the Spacebridge 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".