THE HIDDEN LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS

FOR CENTURIES, MANY CULTURES AROUND THE WORLD IMBUED FLOWERS WITH MEANING, TO THE POINT WHERE A PARTICULAR ARRANGEMENT WAS USED TO COMMUNICATE A SIGNIFICANT, AND PERHAPS CLANDESTINE, MESSAGE. MIGUEL GARCIA REPORTS.

Throughout history, in all human societies, flowers have always held significant cultural meanings. Their representations in literature, art and use in social contexts have been used to convey messages for centuries. This form of coded or symbolic floral communication was dubbed ‘the language of flowers’ or floriography.

In France this art was called ‘le langage des fleurs’, in Japan ‘hanakotoba’, and in Mughal India, both Hinduism and Islam contributed their own cultural and religious sentiments. In Ottoman Turkey, as early as the 14th century, from the Imperial court down, the tradition of ‘sélam’ had a major influence on the language of flowers. This involved a sort of game where gifts, often containing flowers, were used to send messages, and their meanings interpreted through poetry.

Floral bouquets were originally worn in past centuries to mask the miasmas of city life and other bad smells, such as body odour. However, during the 16th century, their purpose changed and they were often given to a love interest. The messages of flowers were determined by their cultural meanings along with legends and myths. In England, Europe and America, subjects such as botany, floral painting and flower arrangement became popular in the education of women.

However, it was Victorian England that provided floriography with the greatest complexity and spawned many books that focused and educated on the symbolism, cultural use and religious and literary celebrations of flowers.

The social conventions of the Victorian era often imposed strict regulation on what could be expressed directly and on the proper means of doing so. Flowers were therefore used in a variety of ways from expressing sorrow, joy, celebration and romance. Flirtation was conducted clandestinely using messages hidden in single flowers and floral bouquets.

In ‘The Maid of Athens’, poet Byron captures the idea of floriography in an often quoted verse in many of the language of flower books:

By all those token flowers that tell What words can never speak so well.

Gifts of specific floral arrangements were used to send secret messages to the recipient, allowing the expression of feelings of romance, and prospective suitors, equipped with their floral dictionaries, could exchange ‘talking bouquets’ or ‘word poesy’, called nosegays or tussie-mussies, which could be used as a fashion accessory, carried in the hand, or worn as a decoration on hat or lapel.

Today, it is popularly known that a red rose indicates romantic love and white flowers celebration or sorrow. But in the Victorian era the floral palette of emotions and messages was quite complex. There were many books on the subject, the first of note was the Le Langage des Fleurs published in Paris in 1819. It introduced a code that became extremely popular with the middle and upper classes of Victorian society.

The Daniel Solander Library has several Victorian-era books on the subject of floriography, in particular: Frederic Shobel’s The Language of Flowers with Illustrative Poetry … (1843); John Ingram’s Flora Symbolica or the Language and Sentiment of Flowers (1869); and Maria Callcott’s A Scripture Herbal, which focused on the medicinal properties of plants as well as their religious meanings in Christianity.

The symbolic meanings of flowers were often provided by their nature. For example, some popular Victorian floral meanings include the sunflower, Helianthus annuus, which is described in Shobel as: ‘… been made the emblem of false wealth, because gold, however abundant, cannot render a person truly rich.’ Then, there is the mimosa or Mimosa pudica, which supposedly represented chastity by virtue of its sensitive leaves that close up when touched, implying the idealised behaviour of a chaste person.

The religious symbolism of flowers has impacted the arts since time immemorial. In Callcott, the lily, or Lilium candidum, is seen as a symbol of purity because its form was used, according to the Bible, to decorate the capitals of the columns in the Second Temple and along the rim of the great libation bowl. Callcott also mentions the words from Jesus in the New Testament: ‘Consider the lilies of the field … Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of those.’ Likewise, the red rose and its thorns have been used to symbolise the blood of Jesus and his crown of thorns. Similarly, in Islam, the tulip, Tulipa x gesneriana, symbolises Allah (God) and the rose, the Prophet Muhammad. Both the shape of the tulip and the letters in the Arabic word for ‘Allah’ bear a similarity to each other. In Hinduism and Buddhism, the lotus flower (Nelumbo nucifera) is the foremost symbol of beauty, prosperity, fertility, purity and divinity, and features as the national flower of India.

Not all floral messages were positive

However, many of the meanings attributed to flowers in Western culture have varied over time. Many flowers had multiple associations in the plethora of books on the subject. One example is the dahlia, which is represented with several positive traits, such as dignity, elegance and good taste, but also the negative quality of instability.

In addition, the position of a corsage or nosegay could also affect the message being sent. Pinned to a woman’s chest signified mere friendship, while pinned over the heart signified romantic love. Likewise the presentation of flowers by hand was also an answer to an implicit question between participants. If given with the right hand the answer was a ‘yes’, whereas handing it with the left meant ‘no’.

Today the rituals surrounding floral gifts and displays are not nearly so intricate but their Victorian meanings are preserved in books, some of which are held in our library. However the abiding inspiration and meaning that we humans attribute to flowers will remain with us into the foreseeable future.