What is this?

This is an online, in-depth encyclopaedia of floriography, better known as the language of flowers.

Rising to prominence in Western Europe and colonial European North America in the 19th century (the 1800s), floriography - from the Latin flora, meaning 'flower', and -graphy, meaning 'writing': 'flower-writing' - encoded different flowers with specific meanings, often drawn from famous poetry, ancient religions, and other pre-existing cultural symbolism such as folk tales, songs, or borrowing from 'exotic' cultures.

Over the century (and continuing today) many hundreds of books were likely published on the topic in all different languages, offering dictionaries of this flower-language for such varied purposes as sending secret messages to a lover, illustrating a memorial or invite for a special occasion, or even letter-for-letter ciphers and phonetic alphabets illustrated with flowers. While many of these books were intended as gifts or tokens for light entertainment, contemporary scholars such as Dr Brent Elliott of the Lindley Library and the late Beverly Seaton (may she rest in peace) have dedicated extensive work to examining their importantance as manifestations of cultural movements of the time, including, but far from limited to, Orientalism, the growing push for women's education, the gradual secularisation of society, and the English Arts and Crafts movement which would later yield Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and the folk revival movements of the 20th century.

While much of this trend has been forgotten, there remains a fascination with floriography for contemporary audiences. This encyclopaedia aims to provide an academic-level lens on the language of flowers, building on other scholars' work, and creating a repository of botanical and cultural resources to inform a contemporary reader. In each entry, I go back to the source of the emblem and sentiment applied to it, confirm its botanical identity, provide the texts as they appear in the original works, and chase these back to their origins in poetry, myth, religion, and culture of the time.

Who are you?

I am Nev, an Australian writer, artist and gardener in my 30s. While I have a background in academia, I am no longer engaged in it professionally - I do this because I am driven to. Nonetheless, I hope one day I can publish this as a book, or transition it into a masters by research.

It's probably worth mentioning that I am working a day job like anyone else. If you'd like to show your appreciation by leaving a tip, and you're able to spare the cash, I'd be appreciative; but if not, simply spreading the word is all I ask.

You can contact me at my main website while I build this site. I'd love to hear any feedback or corrections, and I'm happy to answer questions.

Why are you doing this?

Frustration.

A few years ago, when I began to write historical fiction, I encountered the language of flowers and found myself repeatedly running up against walls looking for a good resource on exactly what it was. There are, as above, innumerable books of the time period, and they vary wildly depending on where they were written and who by - no one book is a perfect summary of the trend. The deeper I got, the more I saw the patterns emerge. I had to examine this closer.

The problem emerged, however, that contemporary resources are too often at best superficial and at worst actively damaging. The further I dug, the more I realised the resources on offer today were riddled with errors. Simple misunderstandings of Victorian nomenclature were working their way into contemporary florigraphy books (if you have one, see if they refer to 'Acacia' as the genus Acacia, the Australian wattle - this is a basic error, as the acacia of the Victorians was Robinia, American locust trees, just as a starting point). I found books published in the 2020s which repeated taxonomical errors from books in the 1820s, meaning their taxonomical listings were now two hundred years out of date. My friends sent me short-form videos from Tiktok and Instagram from florists and edutainment figures claiming to be constructing 'Ophelia's bouquet' or 'Persephone's bouquet' which repeated common errors - misinformation - about the identity of these flowers originating in poorly-researched pieces or bad translations, or giving emblems to flowers that simply had no evidence - which some author had made up wholecloth in the last fifty years, if not in the last three.†

More sinister was the simplification of the sentiments given to these emblems, and the whitewashing or historical revisionism often created in the process of removing content that might upset a contemporary audience. While I have no issue with updating floriography for our era, the question comes when one removes the context, but keeps the sentiment. The origin of floriography is in a fabricated 'code language of the harem' created by Western European authors in the late 18th century, part of a wave of Orientalism which fetishised Eastern cultures - in this case the Ottoman Empire - and portrayed them as 'savage', exotic, esoteric and in a class outside of 'civilised' humanity (and in non-English European floriography, the language of flowers is itself often referred to as 'Selam', drawn from the Arabic greeting salām, 'peace'). Whenever a contemporary author repeats that X sentiment was drawn from 'Ancient Turkish myth' without context, citation or scrutiny, this dehumanisation - and this lie - is repeated.

Similarly, there are some sentiments that inherently reflect the common biases of their time. Take, for example, the sentiment of aversion given to the emblem Chinese pink, Dianthus chinensis. When you read the original writers, it is blatant - simply text - that they have assigned this sentiment to this flower because the flower is Chinese, and they regarded the Chinese Empire of the time as unfriendly to outsiders. Today, as a hopefully more empathetic culture (at our best, at least) we can look back on this period and see that the Qing dynasty they were interacting with was well within its rights to be defensive, considering the many incursions made by European nations at this time. But when a contemporary floriography book repeats that the Chinese pink symbolises aversion without mentioning this history, is it really undoing the damage of the past? Simply, I think we can do better.

This is all not even to mention extensive amount of websites, shared graphics and short-form videos that are incomplete and superficial, often times intending to sell for exorbitant prices information that is already out of public domain and should be free, or worse, attempting to sell you health and wellness products and advice which at best do nothing and at worst are actively dangerous. There are next to no resources which will illuminate you on the taxonomy of their subjects, nor at what point in the 19th century the meaning was applied (take the edelweiss, now extremely famous, but ignored across the board until The Incident with Franz Josepf I and Sisi). Or the resources that will tell you some of the meanings, but not others - when certain emblems have very strong religious and cultural meanings worth taking on board, especially when these are associated with extreme nationalism‡ or the copious which reflect past misogyny, for example, it's best to know.

The fact is that we deserve better. It is obvious to me as a part of that audience that there is a gulf remaining for this kind of resource. Scholars like Elliott and Seaton have done phenomenal work, but their work is in analysis rather than in presenting the data. I found myself needing this resource, and as I believe such knowledge is best freed, so I offer it here. I hope that my work can yield some value to my fellow artist, writer, gardener, and human, and that is all I wish for. Also please credit me, just saying.

† You could, of course, say that all floriography is just things someone made up at some point, and you wouldn't be wholly incorrect, but one should at least own it in that case rather than say it's 'tradition'!

‡ Though I am not here to demonise cornflowers or edelweiss at that - just as they have been used as emblems of the far right, so too have they been emblems of their polar opposite. It is, as always, about context.