Bring the outdoors in
Make a French-style gift of lily of the valley
ith its rows of little white bells looking demurely down from each stalk, lily of the valley is a beautifully understated sign of spring in fullwill know. Woodland foragers risk confusing its flowers with those of wild garlic, though thankfully there’s an unmistakeable difference in smells. Lily of the valley has mythological roots going back to Ancient Greece, where the god Apollo is said to have made the flower grow on Mount Parnassus as a carpet for the feet of the muses. Though it’s the floral emblem of Finland, there’s no country more associated with the plant than France. Called ‘muguet’ here, it supposedly got its associations with 1 May in the 1560s, when King Charles IX made it a custom to offer the flowers to ladies of the court every year on that date. In the 20th century, these royal roots were largely forgotten when the first of the month became a day to celebrate workers. French laws against selling flowers at roadside stalls are largely relaxed for lily of the valley on 1 May, when everybody is after a bouquet to give to a loved one (one with 13 flowers is considered strangely lucky). It’s also been a popular motif for one of the pillars of the French fashion world: Christian Dior always liked to have a buttonhole sprig of his favourite flower, and went on to incorporate it into his dress designs and scents. Any ‘lily of the valley’ perfume you see today, though, will be made from synthetic compounds, as the pure essence of the flower is very hard to distil.
