Full-blown Griceianism

From today's World Wide Words, ed. M. Quinion:

"Two readers e-mailed to tell me that last week a column
in the Sydney Morning Herald had a discussion about the origin of
['full blown'] and to ask for my view of it."

"Published suggestions have
mentioned flowers, glass manufacture and superchargers on hot-rod
cars. You have to go back a long way to find the true answer."

"One
sense of the verb "blow", dating from the fifteenth century, was to
inflate or puff up; nowadays we use "blow up" in this sense, as in
blowing up a balloon, but that's a later formation."

"Something full-blown was completely inflated. Originally it was literal (as in
full-blown sails on a ship) but changed into our modern figurative
term for something fully developed."

"Later, it was confused with a
different ancient verb, also spelled "blow", meaning to blossom (as
in a line of Dryden's, "The Blossoms blow; the Birds on Bushes
sing"), so that "full-blown" took on the specific sense of a flower
in full bloom."