Love, Friendship and More- The Secret Meaning of Flowers For Valentine’s Day

Send your sweetheart a secret message- in flowers!

The Victorians were especially fascinated with the secret meaning of flowers.

Flowers have held significant meanings and conveyed coded messages for centuries. Unlike these days of texting and sliding into DM’s, social convention imposed severe restrictions on what could be expressed directly.

To get around social norms, people used flowers to flirt and send secret messages. ‘Le Langage des Fleurs’, the first dictionary to explain the meanings behind various flowers, was published in 1819 in Paris. This code became extremely popular with the middle and upper classes of Victorian society, who were bound by strict etiquette.

Floriography, or the language of flowers, has impacted the arts since the Victorian era. Floriography has also played its part on occasions such as the royal wedding between Kate Middleton and Prince William, when the bride’s bouquet held very special and important meanings: lily of the valley to symbolise trustworthiness and the return of happiness; sweet William to represent gallantry (as well as sharing the name of her husband-to-be); hyacinth to show the constancy of love; and finally myrtle, representing love and…