Meaning of Flowers

Flower Meaning

Do you completely appreciate the meaning of giving or accepting a flower or a bouquet of flowers? Flowers carry strong messages. In the Victorian England, women wove secret messages of love and affection into small bouquets called Tussie-Mussies. Tussie means flower and Mussie means wet moss. The strongest meaning flowers attach to themselves is LOVE. Red Roses is the champion and Tulips come next in order to help convey the feeling of love. There are other emotions that can be conveyed through flowers. Refusal, contempt, insult, scorn, snub, indifference- people in the past used flowers to express them all in the past. The color and number of flowers presented also alters the meaning of same type flower. In short the flower meaning in a bouquet of flower can be whatever you want it to be choosing the right flowers and the right colors.

Humans attached symbolic meaning to flowers right from the dawn of civilization. The legends about the symbolic meanings of flowers run back to Adam and Eve. Artists continuously attach white lily with Mary, mother of Jesus as the symbol of purity. In an era when it was not permitted to talk about the delicate feelings of love and affection in public, lovers started to exchange roses that translated to deep feelings of love. Thus flowers began to carry the strong meaning of love with them. Later different flowers, their color and number started to convey different meanings.

The tradition of conveying secret messages through flowers was started by Turks in the 17 th century itself. The Turkish secret language of flowers gained popularity all over Europe from the early 1700’s. The lovers used to send flowers to communicate their feelings, desire and affection, their meaning became the flowers meanings. The same flower meant different things in different cultures and times. The original meaning of a yellow rose was jealousy, but today the meaning changed to friendship.

Roses carry a variety of meaning other than affection. The meaning of a full bloom red rose is always I LOVE YOU. The condition, position, number, color, etc all changes its meaning. A dried white rose means, “I prefer death to loss of virtue”. If a girl gets a white rosebud from her sweet heart, she finds out the meaning that she is a girl too young for him to love.

The combination of flowers also assumes different meaning. Roses of red and white colors strapped together means unity till death. And the flower meaning of an anthurium flower is that someone has hard working nature. There are flowers or floral combinations to express any human feelings. It lies in subtle variations in the presentation of the flowers. Saying it with flowers, or the language of flowers is truly romantic.

The meaning of flowers is subjected to change with cultures and ages. White flowers generally mean innocence throughout the world while red flowers represent trustworthiness. Pale pink rose means friendship. Daisies generally mean innocence, gentleness and modesty. Orchids of different colors also symbolize different meaning. It has universal acceptance as symbols of love, beauty and metaphysical meanings. In China, a popular variety of orchid, cattalya symbolizes charm.

To understand and appreciate the language of flowers needs great skills and high degree of romanticism.