By Leslie Watkins

People around the world have used flowers to adorn their homes, grace their altars, celebrate special occasions and honor the dearly departed. When words fail, suiters express their love and admiration with bouquets. In addition to vegetables, herbs and medicinals, monks grew symbolic flowers for services and devotions. Cottage gardeners grow all useful flowering plants together in profusion outside their front doors, contained by fences to keep the free ranging animals out. Shakespeare and other poets have long used flowers for metaphor, and the symbolism of flowers goes back to the beginning of civilization.

Illustration by Leslie Watkins © 2018

Flowers in developing and under-developed countries are big money. Global worth of the floral industry is estimated over $104 billion. Americans spend upwards of $26 billion on floral products and $7.5 billion on cut flowers annually. About 80% of these flower sales are imported. $1.9 billion is spent on flowers for Mother’s Day alone. Roses are the number one most sold cut flower today, but in the 17th century during Holland’s tulip mania, a single tulip bulb of Semper Augustus was valued at 10,000 guilders. According to Mike Dash, the author of Tulipomania: The Story of the World’s Most Coveted Flower and the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused,“It was enough to feed, clothe and house a whole Dutch family for half a lifetime, or sufficient to purchase one of the grandest homes on the most fashionable canal in Amsterdam for cash, complete with a coach house and an 80-ft garden–and this at a time when homes in that city were as expensive as property anywhere in the world.”

Flowers are powerful. Some have sweet fragrances, some are edible, and some are deadly. aconitums, brugmansia, colchicums, daphne, datura, delphiniums, and lily of the valley are all gorgeous and poisonous. Medicinal flowers such as arnica, calendula, digitalis, St. John’s wort, violets and lavender have been used for centuries to cure many ailments, and morphine derived from opium poppies although extremely useful in pain treatment is also highly addictive.

Flowers range in size from a pinhead to the size of a very tall refrigerator. The tropical Rafflesia arnoldii and the Amorphophallus titanum, both known as “corpse flowers”, attract flesh-fly pollinators with the scent of rotting meat. Amorphophallus titanum is the tallest flower in the world at 10 feet high. Its corm weighs approximately 110 pounds or more, and its leaf structure can grow 20 feet tall and 16 feet wide. Rafflesia arnoldii is the widest flower with a diameter of three or more feet. Contrast these with the world’s smallest flowering plant water-meal, or Wolffia globosa, a kind of aquatic duckweed that would fill a thimble with about 5,000 plants!

Flowers have long been used as a way to send unspoken messages. When words of love or sympathy are not enough, flowers convey our caring. During the Victorian era the book called “The Language of Flowers” became popular and secret messages were contained in bouquets or “tussie-mussies”. Meanings were assigned to specific blossoms, as they were in ancient Persia. Roses painted on the ceilings of Roman banquet rooms were a reminder that things said under the influence of wine “sub vino” should also remain “sub rosa”. The rose continued to symbolize secrecy throughout the Middle Ages, in Christian confessionals and in secret societies such as the Rosicrucians. The five-petaled rose motif carved from wood, moulded in plaster and painted in many ornate designs, is frequently found adorning the ceilings of meeting rooms. The term “sub-rosa” is used to indicate that words then spoken are “off the record”.

Psychiatric studies have shown that flowers genuinely create happiness, reduce stress and anxiety. Flowers make us smile. In a study by Rutgers University scientists, 147 women were given flowers and every single one of them smiled… the more flowers, the more smiles. When gifted flowers, people became more open, engaged, talked more and physically drew closer to one another. Studies also show that people are more attracted to others in the presence of flowers. Flowers convey a feeling of trust and respect for fragility. They represent beauty and nature’s treasures. A gift of flowers can indicate a willingness or intention to invest in a relationship. It makes someone feel special and demonstrates your thoughtfulness and consideration.

Luther Burbank, the American botanist and horticulturist whose career spanned 55 years developed over 800 varieties of fruits, vegetables and flowers. Perhaps his most popular contribution is the shasta daisy, found in so many gardens today. He said, “Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the mind.”

Christian Flower Symbolism

• Anemones: Trinity, Sorrow, death
• Carnations: Red – Love
• Columbine: Holy Spirit
• Daisy: Innocence of The Christ Child
• Dandelion: Christ’s Passion
• Hyacinth: Prudence and Peace of mind
• Iris: The Virgin Mary
• Lily: Purity and The Virgin Mary
• Myrtle: Conversion to Christ
• Pansy: Remembrance and Meditation
• Poppy: Sleep, Indifference, The Passion of Christ
• Rose: Red – Martyrdom, White – Purity, a wreath of Roses – Heavenly Joy
• Violet: Humility