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nThere’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance;n
nPray, love, remember: and there is pansies. That’snfor thoughts.
nThere’s fennel for you, and columbines:n
nThere’s rue for you; and here’s some for me:n
nWe may call it herb-grace o’ Sundays:n
nO you must wear your rue with a difference.n
nThere’s a daisy: I would give you some violets, butnthey withered all when my father died.n
nShakespeare, Hamlet, Act IV Scene Vn
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n Ophelia knew of what she spoke, even in her madness.nSymbolic meanings have long been attached to flowers, but it was not until LadynMary Wortley Montagu and Aubry de La Mottraye introduced floriography intonEngland and Sweden respectively, in the early eighteenth century from OttomannTurkey, that the practice took hold in the popular European imagination, as partnof the new craze for all things Orientalist.
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| Robert Tyas – The Language of Flowers |
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nBefore long, the scantndescriptions of Montagu and La Mottraye were added to by a long series ofnwriters, from Louise Cortambert’s Le Language des Fleurs (1819), throughnHenry Phillips’ Floral Emblems (1825), Frederic Shoberl’s Language ofnFlowers (1834) and Robert Tyas’ Sentiment of Flowers (1836), with annimmensely popular edition published by Routledge and illustrated by KatenGreenaway in 1884.
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| Language of Flowers – illustrated by Kate Greenaway |
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nA popular method of describing the meanings of individualnflowers was the weekly or monthly columns published in magazines andnnewspapers, which could run over several years without repeating themselves.nWith such an immense field, there were bound to be conflicting interpretationsnof the plants and flowers, although in time a general consensus of opinionnemerged.
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| Frederic Shoberl – The Language of Flowers – 1835 |
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nThe strength of the medium lay in the ability to use the variousnindividual blooms and plants in combination, thereby producing a ‘phrase’nderived from the meanings of the separate flowers, with the whole being greaternthan the individual parts.
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| Page from Greenaway’s Language of Flowers |
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nThus it was possible to send very subtle and precisenmessages within a single bouquet, declaring nuances of love and devotion,nfriendship and sympathy, joy, piety, hope, despair, through to outrightnanimosity and hatred. Fresh flowers betrayed the immediacy of the message, andnnews and thoughts could be conveyed without inking one’s fingers.
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| Crown Imperial, Turk’s cap Lily and Lily of the Valley |
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nThisnillustration, from Flora’s Lexicon by Catharine H Waterman (1855), showna combination of a Crown Imperial, Turk’s Cap Lily and Lily of the Valley,nwhich carries the meaning, ‘You have the power to restore me to happiness’.
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| Forget-me-not, Hawthorn and Lily of the Valley |
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nAnother example, from Robert Tyas’s The Language of Flowers or FloralnEmblems (1869), has Hawthorn, Forget-me-not and Lily of the Valley combinednto give the sentiment to a departing loved one, ‘Forget-me-not! in thatnrests my hope for the return of happiness.’
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| Lilacs, Marvel of Peru and Spiderwort |
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nFrom the same work, a platenshowing Lilacs (Purple and White), Marvel of Peru and Spiderwort illustratesnfear and hope alternating in the mind of a youthful aspirant to beauty’snfavour, ‘Youthful love is timid, and yields but transient pleasure‘.
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nEven the presentation of the flowers within the bouquet carried meaning; anrosebud or other thorny stem presented bearing both leaves and thorns meant ‘Infear but I hope’, if both leaves and thorns were removed, it became anwarning, ‘neither to fear nor hope’, whereas taking away the thornsnmeant, ‘there is nothing to fear’, but removing the leaves and keepingnonly the thorns said, ‘there is everything to fear’.
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| Rose, Ivy, Myrtle – To Beauty, Friendship and Love |
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nAnd within thenbouquet itself, there was meaning. A flower presented with its leaves intactnmeant a positive affirmation of its meaning, but taking off the leaves meantnthat the negative sentiment was intended; in flowerless plants, cutting off thentops of the leaves carried the same intent. When a flower is inclined to thenleft, the pronoun ‘I’ is intended, when it inclines to the right, ‘thou’ isnmeant; when tying a ribbon or silk band to a stem, a knot to left as you looknat it means ‘I’ or ‘me’, a knot to the front means ‘thou’ or ‘thee’. If annanswer to a question is being sent, a flower placed on the right replies in thenaffirmative, on the left means a negative answer.
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| Henry Phillips – Floral Emblems – 1825 |
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nWhen worn on the body, anflower placed on the head means ‘caution’, on the breast it means ‘remembrance’nor ‘friendship’, and over the heart means ‘love’. To modern tastes, some of thenmeanings seem reasonable enough – beauty by the full-blown rose, oblivion by anpoppy, glory by the laurel and peace by the olive, but others seem odd, to saynthe least. How about sending your love a cabbage (profit), a potaton(benevolence) or a pineapple (you are perfect)?
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| Page from Greenaway’s Language of Flowers |
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nOf course, if the messages werenas well known now as they were then, it would not seem in the least bit strangenand everything would be tickety-boo and, let’s face, it is a all little bit moreninventive and romantic than a dozen red roses on St Valentine’s Day or a mixed bunch ofnscrawny dahlias, leggy carnations and an unidentifiable stalk of greenerynsnatched at the last minute from a late-night filling station when you’venforgotten her birthday. Again.
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