Daphne.
     The daughter of the river-god Peneus, Daphne was ardently desired by Apollo because he had been smitten by Eros (Cupid). According to Ovid, when Apollo mocked Eros’s bow and arrows as unsuitable weapons for a child, the love-god responded by loosing two arrows. One, which inflamed love, struck Apollo; the other, which repelled it, pierced Daphne. Apollo relentlessly pursued the girl, who ran away from him at every opportunity. She implored her father to help her, and he did so by changing her into a laurel tree. Even this did not deter the amorous Apollo, who embraced the tree and made it his sacred symbol; he was thereafter wreathed in laurel.
    The story of Daphne is enormously popular in the fine arts. The nymph is usually depicted in flight, metamorphosing into a laurel as Apollo reaches for her in vain. Such adaptations tend to follow Ovid, whose Metamorphoses infused the myth into western arts.
    In another tale, rarely treated by postclassical artists, Leucippus, son of Oenomaus, loved Daphne and disguised himself as a woman so that he could bathe with her. Apollo, however, revealed the secret, and the young man was killed by Daphne and her nymphs.
    

Further References.
    Giraud, Yves F.-A. 1968. La fable de Daphne: Essai sur un type de métamorphose végétale dans la littérature et dans les arts jusqu’à la fin duXVIIe siècle Geneva: Droz.
    Stechow, Wolfgang. 1965. Apollo und Daphne, 2d revised ed. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.