The Meaning of Flowers: Myth, Language & Lore

By Gretchen Scoble and Ann Field

A colorful primer to the symbolism and lore from around the world for over sixty flowers to help you add meaning to any floral gift.

Should you send a rose of crimson or of white to the one you love? What gift of flowers best expresses thanks to a dear friend? From ancient days, long before words complicated what we say to one another, flowers have been our messengers, invested with our most cherished feelings.

Illustrated with luscious collages by acclaimed artist Ann Field, this enchanting tribute to the power and symbolism of flowers offers a contemporary introduction to an age-old tradition. The text draws on botanical, historical, and mythological sources worldwide, from ancient Rome to Victorian England, from Asia to the Americas, presenting portraits of over sixty blossoms favored for all time. In Persia, for instance, the black medulla of the red tulip was said to represent the lover’s heart, burnt to a coal by love’s passion. To Victorians, lavender signified a broken trust, hollyhocks fertility, and nasturtiums a jest or whimsy.

Blending fact, folktale, natural history, and original art, The Meaning of Flowers explores the language and lore of nature’s most intimate and beautiful gifts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Aug 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781452140902

Book preview

Introduction

FLOWERS CALL TO US. They speak a language we almost hear. Each flower’s color seems an announcement. The single wildflower by the path murmurs its particular name. In a vase, they sing in chorus. Our poetic relationship with flowers may arise from the function of blossoms in nature. Flowers are beautiful and odorous for a reason: to spread pollen and engender their kind. Maybe this basic association has always reminded our species of its own engendering.

We have always worn flowers in our hair. In our literature of love—east and west, north and south—we have woven flowers into myths and stories and given them meanings. We have presented them to one another, found beauty in their blooms. We have taken flowers as emblems and composed of them a language of our own.

Since ancient times, we also have invested these floral organs with magical powers, especially in the matter of love. The periwinkle’s spell engendered love; the myrtle kept it alive. In a fragrant midsummer night’s dream, pansies placed on the eyes of a sleeper induced passion for the one who woke him. A distant lover, blowing on a forget-me-not, could perceive the loved one’s very thoughts.

Asia honored flowers with its own profound tradition. The daylily, which in England was said to indicate flirtation, in China symbolized fertility. The first flower mentioned in literature is the lotus, the flowering water lily, which in China came to symbolize perfect truth and purity and was associated with Buddha himself. In India, the Hindus said that before creation the world was a golden lotus, the Madripadma or Mother Lotus. The god Brahma was born from this golden lotus, and he is often represented seated within the calyx of the flower.

Many of the flowers now so familiar in the West—chrysanthemums, wisteria, peonies—have Asian origins. The Japanese especially have found significance in flowers. Japanese poets saw the transience of life in the morning glory and an image of prosperity in the camellia. The symbolic meanings assigned to the blooms informs the ancient Japanese art of flower arrangement. The most popular card game in Japan has suits representing the flowers of the year.

In the West, flowers have