Before I started Farmgirl Flowers, I knew flowers had the power to say things.
Red roses said romance (obviously). White lilies felt like just the thing for sympathy. Daisies were obviously cheerful and fun. What I absolutely did not know was that people had once built an entire vocabulary around flowers—and that some of it was weirdly specific, surprisingly romantic, and occasionally just plain savage (seriously!).
Turns out, it's very much a real thing. For a while in the 1800s, people were basically using flowers the way we use texts, emojis and, depending on your age, maybe even passive-aggressive Instagram stories. There were entire dictionaries devoted to flower names and their meanings, and you could theoretically assemble a bouquet that said everything from I love you to you are radiant with charms to danger (some dictionaries went with beware, which is somehow even better). Rhododendrons—which are literally our state flower up here in Washington—apparently meant exactly that. Imagine answering the door to a bouquet and realizing someone had essentially sent you the floral equivalent of a restraining order.
The whole system is called floriography.
I've spent more than 15 years around flowers and have accumulated some opinions about which of these meanings actually fit.
I wrote a whole blog post about this, but if you want to glance at some of my favorites, here's the cheat sheet— consider this equal parts Victorian flower dictionary and my completely unofficial amendments to it (the Farmgirl translation).
