Pollen Nation

Foxglove – The Daily Flower for 31 August

Digitalis purpurea may sound like a cat’s calculator, but it’s not – it’s a foxglove.

Beehotel by Andrew Eason

Digital here isn’t describing a unitary mathematical process, but a digit; foxgloves’ botanical name makes reference to the fact that the slender corolla resembles a finger. And purpurea, of course, isn’t an onomatopoeic adjective for the sound of a contented feline, but the colour purple.

Some foxglove cultivars do come in other hues, but the common foxglove flower is predominantly a deep mauve colour. The bell-like blossoms with their distinguishing freckled throats grow almost horizontally off spikes that can reach up to two metres above the ground. 

Digitalis also has its very own digitoxins, which may sound fancy, but are highly poisonous to humans. Although, ironically, these same noxious chemicals can save lives – in very exact quantities, they can be used as a cardiac stimulant. Perhaps the foxglove’s vacillation between a Dr Crippen and a Dr Barnard personality is what inspired its floriograhic meaning, insincerity.

Good for giving to: Anyone who gets your pulse racing (or stops it in its tracks).

Great foxgloves in literature: Carroll’s characters are fans of these flower bells:

“Standing on one side of the stage, and partly overshadowing it, was a tall foxglove, which seemed, as the evening breeze gently swayed it hither and thither, to offer exactly the sort of accommodation that the orator desired.”
From Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, foxglove, Digitalis purpurea, floriography

Flowering Reed – The Daily Flower for 30 August

Nature’s full of things that aren’t always what they seem, and the flowering reed is a prime example.

This tropical exotic native to the Americas is more commonly called a Canna lily – but it’s actually a lily imposter. And look at those gorgeous flowers crowning the broad-leaved long stems, showy as gladioli – but their shared lineage doesn’t go further than their scientific class.

Canna lily by Vivek

If you’re seeking a close relative of Canna orientalis, you’re better off looking in your fruitbowl. Acccording to Mouse and Garden, cannas have strong ties to bananas. You certainly wouldn’t say so from glancing at a flowering reed – unlike some other cannas, which come in a range of fiery shades, including yellow, today’s flower is distinguished by its red blossoms.

At a push, one could find parallels in the black seeds sported by both the canna and the banana. Admittedly, however, the banana’s don’t warrant a comparison with buckshot pellets, while the canna’s do, to the extent that the plant is sometimes called Indian shot.

To find the real connection, you don’t need to have ‘confidence in heaven’ (the flowering reed’s floriographic connotation), just a bit of botanical knowledge: both the banana and the canna are in the class Liliopsida and of the order Zingiberales.

Good for giving to: Doubting Thomases and cheeky monkeys.

Great flowering reeds in literature: Quite a hero in Egyptian hieroglyphics, listedt by Aristotle, and noted in rhyme by Swinburne

“No lovelier laughed the garden which receives
Yet, and yet hides not from our following eyes
With soft rose-laurels and low strawberry-leaves,
Ternissa, sweet as April-coloured skies,
Bowed like a flowering reed when May’s wind heaves
The reed-bed that the stream kisses and sighs.”
From ‘Song for the Centenary of Walter Savage Landor’ in Studies in Song

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, flowering reed, Canna orientalis, floriography

Flower-of-an-Hour – The Daily Flower for 29 August

If gardens were stages and flowers were actors, Flower-of-an-Hour would be a cameo debutante prone to getting a louder applause than the play’s heroine.

Hibiscus trionum by Bogdan Giuşcă

Flirting briefly in the sunlight, vanishing, then appearing again – throughout summer, Hibiscus trionum produces numerous beautiful flowers in cream five-petalled frocks, complete with wine-stained throats, that blossom briefly, and then fade, as the common name suggests.

The little two-inch flowers are diuretics (perhaps Flower-of-an-Hours keep dashing off to powder their noses?), but it’s more likely that it was their transient lifespan that inspired their floriographic connotation of frailty.

Good for giving to: Tempranillo tipplers who can’t turn off the taps.

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, Flower-of-an-Hour, Hibiscus trionum, Venice Mallow, floriography

Flax – The Daily Flower for 28 August

Flax, common flax, linseed, Linum usitatissimum – call it what you will, this is one smart plant. No wonder its flower stands for genius.

Flax flower by Hans Splinter

The little pale blue flowers may only ever reach a few centimeters across, but petal size is by no means the plant equivalent of brain size in mammals (dolphins excluded).

Despite the stature of its frilly bits, the flax plant is incredibly industrious, producing oils rich in omega-3s and a fibrous substance that can be made into linen. What’s more, as a flower essence, flax helps to dispel those niggling worries about what tomorrow may bring.

Good for giving to: Worrywarts and wiseacres.

Great flax in literature: Only Seamus Heaney could belittle their brilliance quite like this:

“All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.”
From ‘Death of a Naturalist’

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, flax, Linum usitatissimum, floriography

Filbert – The Daily Flower for 27 August

No, filbert is not a new addition to the white-collared anti-heroic clan that is Scott Adam’s comic strip. Although it wouldn’t be amiss if the cartoon ever resolved to a happy ending: for a filbert flower is in fact a blossom of Corylus maxima, the species of hazel that connotes reconciliation.

The catkins of Corylus maxima by TeunSpaansr

The flowering parts of the filbert are actually catkins (which means the flowers have no petals), and are either male (a buttery yellow) or female (bright red). Although they may resemble cats’ tails, their ‘gender-based’ colouration makes them rather unlike cats at all – for a female gingery feline is quite a rare find.

Filbert would be a rather good name for a cat, come to think of it, but it was actually once the name of a saint – Saint Philibert, a monastery-founding abbot, whose feast day is on 20 August (why didn’t the floriographers just switch this flower with meadow crowfoot?), which is apparently about when the nuts of the filbert tree are ready to eat. 

Good for giving to: Sulkypusses who need to be appeased.

Great filberts in literature: Empty handed again! Can you help with a poem about filbert, or a reference to it in a novel?

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, filbert, Corylus maxima, floriography

Life Everlasting – The Daily Flower for 26 August

Would living forever bring you eternal contentment? The Victorians must have thought so, for they were quick to accord the meaning ‘continual happiness’ to the flower commonly known as Life Everlasting (Antennaria margaritaceum or Anaphalis margaritacea). 

Anaphalis margaritacea by by Kurt Stueber

Even more commonly, these flowery aerials of tiny pearly white or yellow daisy-like flowers are called cudweed, which raises the possibility that their floriographic connotation was derived not from human pleasure, but from bovine bliss.

Bliss indeed was on the agenda of the magical practitioners who consider the mildy fragrant Life Everlasting an important ingredient in love philtres and spells that promote longevity and wellbeing.

Good for giving to: Under-the-weather witches.

Great Life Everlastings in literature: We couldn’t find any, but please let us know if we’re useless at sleuthing.

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, life everlasting, Antennaria margaritaceum, Anaphalis margaritacea, floriography

Sweet Flag – The Daily Flower for 25 August

One look at the priapic sweet flag and it’s easy to see how it’s become a symbol of male love.

Acorus calamus

The botanical name, Acorus calamus is further testimony to the masculine traits of the sweet flag. Not the first bit – that is merely the Latinisation of a Greek word describing plants with aromatic roots. It’s the calamus bit that’s interesting.

According to myth, Kalamos was a real son of a god (a river god, to be precise) who fell head-over-heals in love with Karpos. Karpos, however, fell head-over-heals into the river, and drowned. Kalamos commiserated by turning into a reed and spent his days rustling sadly ever after. 

Sweet flag’s thick spadix of tiny greeny-brown flowers packed tightly together certainly doesn’t look too down in the mouth, though. Perhaps that’s because of the lovely cinnamon scent that lingers around it, courtesy of its iris-like leaves.

But it was the shape of the sweet flag, not the smell, that held such appeal for Walt Whitman, who used the plant as a symbol for lust and gay love. The Victorian floriographers insisted it connoted ‘fitness’, but remember, they were the ones who covered up table legs lest they prove too evocative.

Good for giving to: Whitman fans, athletes and gay couples.

Great sweet flags in literature: Mr Whitman speaks fondly of them in his ‘Calamus Poems’ in Leaves of Grass:

“I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.”
From ‘Song of Myself’

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, sweet flag, Acorus calamus, floriography

Dahlia – The Daily Flower for 24 August

What links Mexico, fourteenth wedding anniversaries, instability, pomp, good taste and dignity? Why, the dahlia, of course.

Dahlia by Jef Poskanzer

Finding a fitting description to cover all the species in the genus of this native from el país azteca (where they’re called acoctli) is somewhat tricky. Dahlias come in almost every colour besides blue, the usually (but not always) pointed petals vary between being rolled and flat, and the flower heads can look like anything from peonies to pompons to paper ball decorations.

According to The National Dahlia Society, the dahlia genus is classified into 13 groups. These range from daisy-like simplicity to spider-like slinkiness, but are invariably showy. Rather odd, then, that the flowers are named after the sensible son of a preacher man: the botanist Anders Dahl.

Good for giving to: Couples who’ve twice overcome the seven-year itch.

Great dahlias in literature: A fiery description from the master of pomp himself:

“The heat was terribly oppressive, and the huge sunlight flamed like a monstrous dahlia with petals of yellow fire.”
From The Picture Of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, dahlia, acoctli, floriography

Daffodil – The Daily Flower for 23 August

If you find yourself wandering lonely as a cloud and stumble across a belt of golden yellow flowers, chances are you’ve stumbled across something from the narcissus genus – but probably not the daffodil per se. That name is usually reserved for N. pseudonarcissus, distinguishable from other vainglorious species by its paler yellow petals that encircle a darker, yolk-coloured central trumpet.

N. pseudonarcissus by color line

As Mike Skinner would say, these flowers are fit, but don’t they just know it; the name narcissus (after the self-absorbed and haughty Narkissos from Greek mythology) says it all. Excessive vanity is often deemed to be sickening, so it’s quite apt that the beautiful flowers and their bulbs, which contain poisonous alkaloids, are a potent emetic.

The Welsh don’t seem to mind too much, however, and have made the daffodil their national flower. Those Cymraeg-speaking forefathers obviously overlooked the vanity aspect of the flower’s lineage and instead focused on the etymology of daffodil – a name derived from a variant of that flower named after the king’s spear: asphodel.

This regal link could explain why floriographers have accorded daffodils the meaning of chivalry. The flower’s other connotation, unrequited love, is also easily traced back to that emotionally numb young lad from ancient Greece. But as for daffodils being floriographically synonymous with contentment – well, either their primrose scent is intensely satisfying, or true bliss is only achieved after gorging on the death-inducing bulbs.

Good for giving to: Buy these for yourself if you’re fond of mirrorgazing.

Great daffodils in literature: It wasn’t only Wordsworth who did them proud:

“Miss Waterford, torn between the aestheticism of her early youth, when she used to go to parties in sage green, holding a daffodil, and the flippancy of her maturer years, which tended to high heels and Paris frocks, wore a new hat.”
From The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, daffodil, Narcissus pseudonarcissus, floriography

Flowering Currant – The Daily Flower for 22 August

Here’s a curious possibility: flower-lovers from British Columbia with a better knowledge of British geography than non-flower-lovers living on the Sceptred Isle.

It’s not such an unlikely prospect when you consider the Pulborough Scarlet – a cultivar of Ribes sanguineum that’s native to Canada’s westernmost province, but named after a little-known village in West Sussex.

Ribes sanguineum blossom by André Karwath

More commonly known as the flowering currant, ribes sanguineum (from the Persian ribas, meaning acid-tasting, and the Latin for blood red) produces racemes of little red, fuchsia, and, in some cultivars, white flowers.

These five-petaled tubular beauties produce a lovely sweet scent that’s most attractive to birds and butterflies. The Victorians clearly derived much satisfaction from currants, too, according them the floriographic connotation ‘you please me’. Well, that and ‘thy frown will kill me’, so don’t be too easily fooled by the charms of the Ribes genus.

Good for giving to: Grimacing Medusas who nevertheless don’t cease to delight.

Great flowering currants in literature: Sheer poetry in Steven Marx’s Ecologs

“The subtle fragrance of Ribes sanguineum glutinosum, more leathery than sweet, occasionally wafted past but dissipated before I could satisfy my hungry nostrils.”

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, currant, Ribes sanguineum, floriography

Cuckoo Flower – The Daily Flower for 21 August

Craziness, certainly; infidelity, you bet. But ardour? Since when has a cuckoo symbolised great enthusiasm, let alone fiery love? Since those Victorian floriographers decided that it would be an apt association for the cuckoo flower.

Wiesenschaumkraut by Kathrin Tausch

This mysterious pairing of flower and meaning becomes a little clearer when we learn that Cardamine pratensis (which translates roughly as ‘cress family member of the field’) was named after our philandering feathered friend for no other reason than an overlap between their blooming and cooing times.

Certainly there’s no physical resemblance between cuculus canorus and the cuckoo plant. There’s not much resemblance between that flower and a milkmaid’s dress really, either, but sufficient for someone to have christened the plant with its other common name, lady’s smock.

It could be that we’re just missing the obvious link between an inch-wide flower with four lilac or white petals and six yellow stamens and the habitual garb of a dairy damsel. Somehow, though it seems unlikely. Perhaps the botanists of yore just washed down their cress salads with a little too much wine when they were naming this flower.

Good for giving to: Wanton wives, here-and-there husbands and zealous paramours.

Great cuckoo flowers in literature: A little nod to the meadow inhabitant in Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s poem, ‘Spring’:

“Chill are the gusts to which the pastures cower,
And chill the current where the young reeds stand
As green and close as the young wheat on land
Yet here the cuckoo and cuckoo-flower
Plight to the heart Spring’s perfect imminent hour
Whose breath shall soothe you like your dear one’s hand.”

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, cuckoo flower, lady’s smock, Cardamine pratensis, floriography

Meadow Crowfoot – The Daily Flower for 20 August

If you’ve ever looked closely at the tarsus of Corvus corone, you’re probably wondering how on earth meadow crowfoot became the common name of Ranunculus acris. Apparently, it’s something to do with the three-part pedate leaves, which seems to suggest (since we’re talking about the flowers, after all) that we should stick to the more apt monikers of meadow buttercup and gold cup – far more accurate descriptions of the yellow goblet-shaped petals.

Buttercup landscape V by Till Westermayer

Certainly, the five yellow petals and central mass of saffron-hued stamens have a radiance deserving of the floriogrpahic connotation ‘brilliancy’. Perhaps this is why the flower was the accessory du jour of pre-nuptial lovers in the days of yore.

Good for giving to: Shiny-eyed fiancées (whose eyelids are wrinkle-free).

Great crowfoots in literature: Charlotte Perkins Gilman puts the buttercup above those thousand jaundiced images of which our souls are constituted:

“It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw – not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things.”
From The Yellow Wallpaper

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, crowfoot, buttercup, Ranunculus acris, floriography

Scarlet Pimpernel – The Daily Flower for 19 August

“We seek him here, we seek him there; those Frenchies seek him everywhere. Is he in heaven? Is he in hell? That demmed, elusive Pimpernel.”

Anagallis arvensis by Jean-Jacques Milan

Elusive as Baroness Emmuska Orczy’s fictional hero may be, his floral namesake is a lot easier to track down. The small, red Anagallis arvensis flower that served as a signature on the aristocratic action man’s missives is such a common sight around its native Europe that it’s considered a weed.

But prevalence is certainly no synonym for unsightliness in the case of the scarlet pimpernel. The flowers are indeed as charming as Sir Percy Blakeney – and equally good masters of disguise. For when the weather begins to blacken, the scarlet pimpernel furls its five bright petals towards the central purple spot so that just the greenish undersides are exposed.

This sensitivity to the elements explains how the scarlet pimpernel became known as Shepherd’s Barometer and Poor Man’s Weatherglass, and why the flower is sometimes said to connote change, but it does nothing to elucidate the floriographic connotation ‘faithlessness’. Although, seeing as Anagallis arvensis translates as ‘amusing of the field’, perhaps the joke is on us.

Good for giving to: Blue-blooded paladins and social chameleons.

Great pimpernels in literature:: Tennyson remarks on the early-to-bed habits of the flower:

“The slender acacia would not shake
One long milk-bloom on the tree;
The white lake-blossom fell into the lake,
As the pimpernel dozed on the lea;”
From ‘Come into the Garden, Maud’

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, scarlet pimpernel, Anagallis arvensis, floriography

Blue Periwinkle – The Daily Flower for 18 August

Seaside town inhabitants must wonder about the sanity of Wordsworth, composer of an ode in which ‘the fair periwinkle trailed its wreaths’. Was old Will a supreme anthropomorphiser with a soft spot for bereaved sea snails?

Rumours of that kind can be incredibly damaging to a poet’s reputation, so it’s just as well there are numerous landlubbers who can set the record straight: England’s great Romantic penman wasn’t ululating about Littorina littorea, but about vinca minor.

Vinca minor vine - Periwinkle  by bc anna

After too much of the captain’s rum, the coastal crew could be forgiven for mistaking the periwinkle mollusc for the periwinkle flower. Five petals fusing to form a slender tube could be said to look a little like a fleshy foot emerging from a conical shell – albeit that the flowers are the colour of the evening sky.

The trailing about which Wordsworth was waxing lyrical is the propensity the periwinkle plant’s stems have for spreading, a characteristic noted by the botanical name, which is derived from the Latin vincio, ‘to bind’.

But was it Wordsworth’s passion for the periwinkle that led to its floriographic connotation of first love? While that’s a suitably romantic notion to entertain, it’s far more likely that this association comes from the fact that the flower was a popular ingredient in love potions – a heritage hinted at in the French name for the flower: ‘violette des sorciers’.

Good for giving to: Budding sweethearts, salty old sea dogs and poet laureates.

Great periwinkles in literature: If you thought Wordsworth was weird, try O. Henry:

“And now the dark-haired young man spoke to me, and it became evident that his mind also moved along its own set of grooves.

‘I should like to be a periwinkle,’ said he, mysteriously, ‘on the top of a valley, and sing tooralloo-ralloo.’”

From ‘A Cosmopolite In A Café’  in The Four Million

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, periwinkle, vinca, floriography

Pear Blossom – The Daily Flower for 17 August

The pear blossom is a flower to be regarded with suspicion. Sure, the rounded, holier-than-thou whiteness and petite stature of the five-petalled flowers on a Pyrus tree seem to put them above suspicion, but mark those dark-anthered stamens and yellowing throats… there’s something fishy going on.

Bradford Pears in Spring by Jason Presser

Quite literally something fishy in the case of the Bradford pear blossom, which reeks of rotting river inhabitants. A word of warning, then, to anyone who purchases perfumes that purport to be plumped up with pear blossoms – exactly what type of pear blossom has been used?

Despite this affectation, the pear blossom stands for affection in floriography. What’s more, it’s considered a symbol of purity and connotes health and hope. In the East, the pear blossom is the symbol of the 8th month, and represents wise and benevolent administration. With such positive associations, it’s no surprise that the Pear Blossom badge was the symbol of Worcestershire worn by Yeomen in the Boer War and the First World War.

Good for giving to: Anosmiacs.

Great pear blossoms in literature: Laura abandons the usual orange blossoms in favour of pears – for their symbolism or their scent, one wonders:

“Many of the women blushed for what they knew, others were crying, as if for some tragedy at which they had but lately assisted in a theatre, and a few criticized the bride for carrying a sheaf of pear-blossom, which was original, to say the least.”
Voss by Patrick White

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, pear blossom, pear flower, Pyrus, floriography

Butterfly Orchis – The Daily Flower for 16 August

Classics scholars with no knowledge of flowers would be forgiven for thinking that Orchis papilionaceae was a blue movie for lepidopterists. Certainly, the Aristotelian disciple Theophrastus must have enjoyed a little smirk when he named the orchid after its testicle-resembling root system. But you can do those sorts of things with impunity when you’re the father figure of botany and ecology.

Pink butterfly orchid by Alastair Rae

The papilionaceae aspect of the butterfly orchis doesn’t involve digging the dirt to discover. Despite their sometimes unpleasant scent, the showy, fan-shaped bright pink or purple patterned flowers of this Mediterranean plant boast a full ‘lip’ that is rather reminiscent of a fluttery insect. They’re certainly rather jolly – possibly why floriographers associate them with gaiety.

Good for giving to: Socialites and sprightly types.

Great butterfly orchises in literature: A ramble from Nabakov is surely worth a few points:

“‘I can add,’ said the girl, ‘that the petal belongs to the common Butterfly Orchis; that my mother was even crazier than her sister; and that the paper flower so cavalierly dismissed is a perfectly recognizable reproduction of an early-spring sanicle that I saw in profusion on hills in coastal California last February.’”
Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, orchids, butterfly orchis, Orchis papilionacea, floriography

Blue Throatwort – The Daily Flower for 15 August

A rough-throated blue sounds far more like a lizard than a flower – and certainly not like anything that’s shorthand for neglected beauty. But friends of the throatwort trachelium caeruleum know better.

Balmy pink roses flirt brilliantly with clusters of trachelium and dusky eucalyptus leaves

The common name of this Campanulaceae family member suggests that the flower has an abundance of bronchial benefits, but the mild-scented umbrella flower is all bark and no bite. Speculators claim that the rumours were started by a phenomenon of corolla correlation: to quacksalvers of yore, the outer whorls of blue throatwort looked rather like human throats.

Nowdays, blue throatwort is more commonly found in floral arrangements than medicine cabinets. As well as boasting a vase life of up to two weeks, blue throatwort has admirable umbel-like clusters, roughly 4-6 inches across, made up of dozens of tiny ¼-inch flowers that do a most impressive job of filling out hand-ties and giving texture to bouquets.

Good for giving to: Forgotten sweethearts and maidens in need of a makeover.

Great blue throatworts in literature: Sir Walter Scott writes some purple poetry:

“Twas silence all—he laid him down,
Where purple heath profusely strown,
And throatwort with its azure bell,
And moss and thyme his cushion swell.
There, spent with toil, he listless eyed
The course of Greta's playful tide;”
Rokeby: Canto III

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, throatwort, trachelium caeruleum, floriography

Thrift – The Daily Flower for 14 August

Is this the 50 Cent of the flower world? Perhaps not quite, since thrift was actually the flower depicted on the old thruppenny bit. Still, ‘get rich or die tryin’’ is an apt aphorism for Armeria maritima: folklore says you’ll never be poor when thrift is growing in your garden, but the frugal seaside perennial that connotes sympathy for the fallen also moonlights as a funeral flower.

Seapink by northbaywanderer

That’s about as ghetto fabulous as the one-inch clusters of tiny, five-petalled flowers get, however. As the county flower of Bute, Pembrokeshire and the Isles of Scilly, thrift (or sea pink, as it’s sometimes called) is more connected with the queen than Queens. But perhaps any rappers needing to put things in perspective would benefit from some thrift flower essence, which is purported to help balance the energy centres.

Good for giving to: Bereaved fishwives and outta control gangstas.

Great thrifts in literature: Does spam poetry count as literature?

self-deceit chicken hazard gentle-born
sight rhyme Pro-french ten-a-penny
school seating sea thrift smoot hole
hand-fire stomach-filling shaft horsepower

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, thrift, sea pink, Armeria maritima, floriography

Common Vetch – The Daily Flower for 13 August

In the words of the great miserablist, shyness is nice, but shyness can stop you from doing all the things in life you’d like to.

Vetch may have symbolised shyness to the Victorians, but that hasn’t stopped the plant from horsing around as livestock fodder and dabbling in a bit of nitrogen fixing. Nor did it stop it from being an amuse-gueule in the diet of late Stone Agers.

Common Vetch by Dawn Endico

Vicia sativa, as common vetch is less commonly known, certainly doesn’t look like an old fashioned flower, though. Rather, it has a jaunty jazz era or baby-booming Eighties edge: two-tone fuchsia and purple petals, whitening toward the base, that are swathed in a long-toothed calyx.

Fortunately, this rather garish fashion sense is moderated by the common vetch’s size; the bilaterally symmetrical flowers of this pea-family member are only between one and two centimetres long.

Good for giving to: Timid types.

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, common vetch, Vicia sativa, floriography

Vine – The Daily Flower for 12 August

It doesn’t take a genius to work out why floriographers associated the flower of vitis vinifera with intoxication. And little more nous is needed to understand the logic behind Bach’s use of grape flower in an essence designed to mellow out monocrats.

Vitis vinifera from Koehler’s Medicinal-Plants (1887)

Despite their impressive scent and the kudos that comes from the fruit, vine flowers are otherwise unimpressive: small and, rather predictably, light green. They’re also kind of shy, curiously – or perhaps there’s another reason that they take a year to appear on the woody stems of the plant.

Good for giving to: Bacchanalians.

Great vine flowers in literature: It’s not quite high art, but it’s a story nonetheless:

“The men and boys wear doppas with grape flowers on them because grapes are so very important to us […] Even my name tells everyone how much we love our grapes. The "gul" at the end of my name – Hajigul – means ‘grape flower’.”
Marianne Saccardi, Hajigul's Story

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, vine, grape flower, Vitis vinifera, floriography

Great Willowherb – The Daily Flower for 11 August

Fancy some codlins and cream this evening, primrose? Perhaps with your kaporie tea?

Great willowherb blossom by André Karwath

Depending where in the world you find yourself, you’ll discover a different nickname for great willowherb, the purply-pink, white-throated, four-petalled flowerer of the Onagraceae family.

Perhaps this profusion of soubriquets is the reason why floriographers assigned willowherb the meaning ‘pretension’. Or perhaps it’s the fact that Epilobium hirsutum (so named for its hairy stem and tufted seeds) is a bit of a mountebank is its emission of moss rose and fresh apple scents – which is nothing if not putting on airs if you’re a little one-inch blossom considered a weed in many parts of the world.

Good for giving to: Charlatans and scarlet fans.

Great willowherbs in literature: Grevel Lindop unmasks their treachery in images:

“The knitwork tapestry of furballed goosegrass,
pink spikes of willowherb have run her through

but still the unstaunched spring whispers and sings
and will not let her rest and turn to earth

but long past hope still sets the empty heart
echoing to the perpetual music of water.”

From a poem in Playing with Fire

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, willowherb, Epilobium hirsutum, floriography

Whortleberry – The Daily Flower for 10 August

Blueberry, blaeberry, bilberry, huckleberry, whortleberry – whatever you choose to call it, the botanists clearly favoured the fruit over the flower. But flower indeed Vaccinium myrtillus does, albeit rather unimposingly.

Vaccinum myrtillus by BerndH

Look closely at the stalks of this Eurasian shrub while you’re concocting recipes for juices and jams that use its as-yet unborn fruit, and you’ll notice some tiny translucent pinky-green bells, about 5 mm wide and edged with delicate little retroussé lobes, hanging tout seul or in pairs: whortleberry flowers.

These tiny globular blossoms with their waxy texture eventually develop into tasty dark blue berries  (whortle is alleged to derive from the Old French word heurte, an azure-coloured ball) with a diameter of about 10 mm and a propensity for appearing in the ingredients list of herbal products.

Despite its positive properties, too much whortleberry tincture used in conjunction with anticoagulants is said to prevent the stemming of blood. One can only imagine that a Victorian floriographer had a run-in of this sort with the whortleberry, for why else would such a sweet little flower be said to symbolise treachery?

Good for giving to: Anyone with a Judas complex.

Great whortleberries in literature:: R.D. Blackmore’s John encounters the little blighters in that romance of Exmoor, Lorna Doone:

“He stopped his little nag short of the crest, and got off and looked ahead of him, from behind a tump of whortles.”

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, whortleberry, Vaccinium myrtillus, floriography

Witch Hazel – The Daily Flower for 9 August

Saxifragales Hamamelidaceae Hamamelis sounds a little like a Latinesque abracadabra, and could verily have come into contact with claw of owl and lizard’s tail; it’s the botanical name of the four species of shrubs commonly known as witch hazel.

Jelena witch hazel by Blue Lotus

The ribbon-like sulphur-yellow or harlot-red petals of the Hamamelis flowers do indeed resemble the unkempt talons of a stereotypical sorceress – and uncannily curl and unfurl in response to the weather. But it’s not for this reason that witch hazel acquired its common name. ‘Witch’, which comes from the Old English word ‘wice’, meaning bendable, is a reference to the fact that the branches of these shrubs were once de rigueur when it came to divination rods.

Nowdays, the branches are more prized for their piquant-scented tannin-rich bark, which is used as an astringent ingredient in such modern potions as cosmetics. The flowers themselves also boast fine fragrances, ranging from delicate and sweet to pungent and spicy. Those rather intoxicating scents must be the spell to which the Victorian floriographers were referring.

Good for giving to: Treasure hunters, spotty teenagers and wiccans.

Great witch hazels in literature: Nathaniel Hawthorn, no stranger to a witch hunt, alludes to the divining properties of the Hamamelis genus:

“In his general state, Ilbrahim would derive enjoyment from the most trifling events, and from every object about him; he seemed to discover rich treasures of happiness, by a faculty analogous to that of the witch hazel, which points to hidden gold where all is barren to the eye.”
From ‘The Gentle Boy’ in Tales Twice Told

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, witch hazel, Hamamelis,  floriography

Sweet Scabious – The Daily Flower for 8 August

Picturing something called scabious that’s blood red and encased in a crust of green needn’t get you visualising a suppurating wound. There’s a far more pleasant alternative: Scabiosa atropurpurea.

Scabious by Takashi Tomooka

The lush, fragrant pincushion of purpling petals looks far more like a plump double aster than a scab, which rules out the possibility that the flower’s appearance inspired either its botanical name or its floriographic connotation, ‘unfortunate attachment’.

Rather, scabiosa is known for its skin-healing properties and the fact that English widows were rather partial to wearing the atropurpurea variety in the 1700s – which also explains the flower’s other common names: mourning bride and mournful widow.

Good for giving to: Bereaved brides and mismatched paramours.

Great sweet scabiouses in literature: In 1697, William Congreve penned a play entitled The Mourning Bride. You might not know his name, but you’ve more than likely dispensed his wisdom:

“Heav’n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn’d, Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d.”

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, sweet scabious, Scabiosa atropurpurea, mourning bride, floriography

Sainfoin – The Daily Flower for 7 August

Sainfoin (or saintfoin, if you prefer) is best known as a forage crop and a source of honey. Healthy, hey? Actually, more like ‘healthy hay’, etymologically speaking.

But why are we fumbling about with the nutritious properties, grazing benefits and verbal origins of Onobrychis viciifolia, when its floral qualities are clearly infinitely superior.

Onobrychis viciifolia by Jean Tosti

This beauty doesn’t look like something the livestock should be eating. Its bright pink or white flowers with delicate red veins grow in splendid conical spikes, densly packed and pointing heavenward. Rather fitting for a flower that’s also known as holy clover and that connotes ‘trust in God’

Good for giving to: Holy cows and honey pies.

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, sainfoin, Onobrychis, holy clover, floriography

Autumn Crocus – The Daily Flower for 6 August

Naked ladies have been known to cause curious side-effects amongst those with sensitive dispositions. Incoordination and salivation? Perhaps. Collapse? Maybe. But abdominal pain and severe diarrhoea? This can’t be any old naked lady we’re talking about – it must be Colchicum autumnale, the highly poisonous autumn crocus, a.k.a. meadow saffron.

Autumn Crocus by bc anna

It may be bad on the inside, but the autumn crocus is all good on the outside. Six slender purplish petals and slinky golden stamens combine to create a showy and attractive flower head.

The blossoms often appear long after the leaves have died, giving the stems a rather bare appearance. Perhaps this indecent exposure – or perhaps the noxious toxins within – compelled the Victorians to see the autumn crocus as shorthand for ‘my best days fled’.

Good for giving to: Miserablists and scopophiles.

Great autumn crocuses in literature: Before she wrote One Hundred and One Dalmatians, Dodie Smith penned a play called Autumn Crocus.

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, autumn crocus, meadow saffron, Colchicum autumnale, floriography

Hundred-Leaved Rose – The Daily Flower for 5 August

Imagine a little pink cabbage with a strong, sweet scent – one that you didn’t have to eat, either. Voila: the hundred-leaved rose, known rather unglamorously as the cabbage rose. Although, almost certainly, boarding-school food would have a very different reputation if the murky soups and overcooked stews had been made with Rosa centifolia. 

Rosa centifolia

This very many petalled pink beauty, which is known somewhat more glamorously as the Provence rose, is, very glamorously indeed, alleged to have been a favourite in Josephine’s rose garden at Malmaison. The sumptuous pouf of petals also made the hundred-leaved rose a popular motif in the still life paintings of the Old Masters – explaining its other nickname, Rose des Peintres.

Despite ex-Mrs Bonaparte’s horrendous debts and Dutch painter Jacobus van Huysum’s drinking woes, the Victorians decided to assign the hundred-leaved rose the floriographic connotation ‘dignity of mind’.

Good for giving to: Continental artists and Empresses of the French.

Great hundred-leaved roses in literature: Bohemian poet Francis Ladislav Celakovsky authored Ricze stolistova which translates as ‘Hundred-leaved rose’.

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, roses, centifolia, cabbage rose, floriography

Morning Glory – The Daily Flower for 4 August

The girl from Ipomoea, when she passes, each one she passes goes ‘a-a-ah!’ But, according to floriographers, the morning glory, unlike the girl from Ipanema, says ‘she loves you’. A bit of a throwaway phrase, however, considering that each flower only lasts for a day.

Ipomoea by Tracy Ducasse

What the morning glory lacks in endurance, it makes up for with abundance – you’ll find a new beauty parading its heavenly blue trumpet every morning. That’s assuming you’re not eyeing out Grandpa Ott, Scarlet O’Hara or Pearly Gates – just three of the over-500 morning glory varieties, who produce purple, crimson and white floral funnels respectively.

If the sheer but short-lived high of admiring morning glories doesn’t provide a sufficiently substantial fix, you could try eating Ipomoea violacea, whose little black seeds have mild hallucinogenic properties. Other Ipomoea varieties have slightly more medicinal associations – the tropicals were once popular remedies for bloated ankles, roundworm infections and constipation.

Good for giving to: Katharine Hepburn fans, glider pilots and anyone chained to the mirror with a razor blade.

Great morning glories in literature: None in the classics, but they’ve secured their place in popular culture thanks to the Beatles (‘She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah’) and Oasis.

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, morning glory, ipomoea, floriography

Moss Rose – The Daily Flower for 3 August

What do Napoleon’s hat, Dresden dolls and Goethe have in common? They’re all covered in moss.

While this may be true of the original artifacts just mentioned, it’s not entirely the case of the rose cultivars which bear their names. The buds and stems of moss roses certainly appear to be covered in musci, but the truth is that the little spore-like tufts are actually a glandular mutation.

Delicacy by cobalt123

The moss rose is a good sport about it, though – sport being rose parlance for an offshoot of a parent plant. But there’d really be no need for the moss rose to complain. Its lineage reveals close ties with the hundred-leaved centifolias and heavenly scented damask roses, so good genes and desirable traits were most assuredly passed down. No wonder the moss rose stands for superior merit in floriography.

Good for giving to: Gifted children.

Great moss roses in literature: At the centre of a high-level floral debate in Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone:

“As far as I could understand it, the question between them was, whether the white moss rose did, or did not, require to be budded on the dog-rose to make it grow well.”

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, roses, moss rose, floriography

Damask Rose – The Daily Flower for 2 August

Lovesick puppies with a propensity for maladroitness will relate well to the Damask rose.

Connoting bashful love, Rosa damascena is first filled with bravado – as testified by its superlative sweet fragrance and sumptuous head of over 60 pink or red petals – before collapsing into clumsiness and dropping those petals willy nilly all over the place.

Lokelani by Alan L
(Read about this rose’s adventures in Hawai’i)

But seeing as it’s somewhat of an elderly gent in the rose world, perhaps we should be more forgiving.

Most suitors these days can’t claim to have left a mark in the annals of history dating back to 445 BC. Rival roses may claim that the flower of which Herodotus wrote at that time wasn’t in fact the Damask, but our ungainly hero just shrugs, drops a few more petals, and reminisces about its travels to Europe from Persia in the middle of the 13th century.

Good for giving to: Ham-fisted honeys and coy cavaliers.

Great Damask roses in literature: Wilkie Collins’ Sergeant Cuff was compelled to remark on the flowers as he sauntered through a rosery:

“You find the damask rose a goodish stock for most of the tender sorts, don't you, Mr. Gardener?”
The Moonstone

Vangelis also wrote an instrumental with the title  ‘Damask Rose’.

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, Damask rose, Rosa damascena, floriography

Burgundy Rose – The Daily Flower for 1 August

Black Magic, Bull’s Eye, Baccara, Grand Prix and Ecstasy all fit the bill when it comes to deep red roses, but they’re not the real McCoy. The true burgundy rose is, well, the eponymous Burgundy rose.

To avoid confusion when seeking this dark-blooded beauty, you could ask for Le Pompon de Bourgogne, Centifolia parvifolia or Rosa burgundica. By any other name, this fragrant rose really will smell as sweet, but, if you’re in the hunt for the Burgundy rose in particular, we suggest sticking to its known synonyms.

Curiously, the Burgundy rose isn’t always the colour of red table wine from eastern France, although it’s steeped in nearly as much history. The blossoms of this miniature variety, whose tightly packed double-petalled pompons have given pleasure since 1664, tend to be more inspired by beverages from the Bordeaux region, ranging from claret to plum.

So how did a rose as complex, sophisticated and knowingly dazzling as France’s finest export come to connote simplicity and unconscious beauty in floriography? Perhaps excess indulgence in the Burgundy rose has the same effect as immoderate consumption of Burgundy wine: you’re first rendered guileless, briefly believe yourself immeasurably attractive, and then keel over.

Good for giving to: Sommeliers, simpletons and sleeping beauties.

Do you have a photograph of Le Pompon de Bourgogne? We’d be honoured to publish it on this blog.

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, roses, Centifolia parvifolia, Pompon de Bourgogne, floriography