What Does YOUR Flower Say?

Who needs texts, tweets or even telephones, when you have a vase of tulips?  

From early Chinese dynasties to the Victorian age, flowers spoke volumes. Ancient Turkish harems created bouquets of secret codes for clandestine communication. This botanical conversation found its way to Europe in the 1700’s. By the Victorian era, it blossomed as the perfect way for “proper” people to express feelings they could never speak aloud.

A geranium asked “will you have this next dance,” while butterfly weed begged, “let me go.” From ambition (mountain laurel) to austerity (thistle), war declaration (belvedere) to warmth (peppermint), there was a living symbol for every sentiment.

Colors added to the lexicon: all tulips said “love” but yellow tulips shouted “hopeless love” and striped tulips whispered “beautiful eyes.” Red carnations were a “yes,” striped carnations a “maybe” and yellow carnations an emphatic “no!”  

Mix a bunch of flowers into the popular bouquets called “tussie-mussies” and you could share an entire tome in a single arrangement. At one point, there were 400 dictionaries for this amazing language of flowers! (Who knows? If I were born 200 years earlier, I might have made a living with perennials instead of a pen!)

While floriography, as it was called, went the way of hoop skirts and horse-drawn carriages, we still can enjoy special meanings with our botanical friends, like marking our birthday. What is your “birth” flower?