Tasteful Tuesday -- The Language of Flowers

I recently read a great book where the heroine was doing the artwork for a book on the meaning of flowers. I became fascinated by this "secret language," where you could send a message to your beloved by way of a bouquet.

Why had I never heard of this? Why wasn't TelaFlora advertising the heck out of the idea? A bouquet that holds a message -- that's perfect romance fodder. A beautiful, fragrant puzzle. Hey, if you're going to plunk down the cash for flowers, you could get that arrangement to do double-duty.

So, according to Wikipedia (I know, I need a better source), "the language of flowers, sometimes called floriography, was a Victorian-era means of communication in which various flowers and floral arrangements were used to send coded messages, allowing individuals to express feelings which otherwise could not be spoken. This language was most commonly communicated through Tussie-Mussies, an art which has a following today."

(I just love the phrase Tussie-Mussies.)

This is awesome stuff. And, I realized, a perfect topic for a Tasteful Tuesday blog! I was going to provide a list of flowers and their meanings, and have everyone put together a virtual bouquet to send to their beloved. (Or design the one they thought a lover would send to them.)

Five minutes on the internet, though, and I realized I'd hit a bit of a snag. Seems some of the meanings of flowers have gotten a little confused over the years, as several websites listed flowers and their meanings and they didn't quite agree.

This could be disastrous! Imagine you send your beloved Azaleas. If they went to this site, they'd be told it meant "abundance." But at this site, it would mean "Fragile and Ephemeral Passion." Not the same thing.

Even worse -- your beloved sends you Lavender. Depending which site Google ranks first, you could be translating that Lavender as either "distrust" or "devotion."

And I thought the Mars and Venus language gap was difficult to bridge. You could think you were sending one message and end up sending something else entirely.

Very tricky. And now that I can't find consensus on the internet for anything other than red tulips, a couple of rose types, and rosemary, my Tasteful Tuesday blog topic is shot.

But we can talk about flowers anyway. What kind of flowers do you like to receive? Are you a classic Red Rose kind of girl? Or would you rather have peonies? Irises? Daffodils? Any flowers send the wrong message to you?

(I actually don't like roses that much. I like calla lilies, orchids, peonies, and daisies. And I'm very superstitious about red carnations. They're bad luck. They give me the willies just looking at them. Of course, guess what the first flowers DG ever brought me were? I put a smile on my face, thanked him, and put them in the closet until they died -- only pulling them out when DG came to my room. Do you know how long it takes carnations to die? FOREVER. But it was the thought that counted. I know that he meant well. He now knows not to bring me red carnations. ~grin~)

PC

***Instigator is blogging over a the Blaze Authors blog today about Christmas music. That's pretty Tasteful!