It goes without saying that people adore flowers. Other species, such as insects and hummingbirds, deer, rabbits, groundhogs, and the like might adore flowers, as well, but their purposes tend to be more practical, whereas human attitudes can border on the worshipful. If you personally find flowers to be nothing special, for God sakes don’t tell anybody, though frankly many might not believe you anyway, figuring it’s some feeble attempt at humor or to call attention to yourself.
But if that is truly the case with you, what’s going on? Maybe it’s true that you don’t cultivate a yard or garden of them, or have them in vases or old wine bottles scattered around your house or potted as houseplants, or portrayed in colorful still-life paintings on your walls. But do you deny that flowers offer some kind of visual enhancement to the coming of spring? Can you somehow ignore the endless parade of flowers in the landscape as the weeks pass, with their many varieties of color and shape and other visual textures? Around here we get the witch hazel blossoms in January, then the snowdrops followed by the crocuses. After that it’s the daffodils followed by the tulips, after which all bets are off, as the drab landscape of winter gives way to color everywhere.
So you would claim that not even some small part of this enhances your quality of life at all, if only in the moment? Maybe you never look up from your phone, and of course you are not alone in this. It’s also possible you are hopeless in these matters, lacking all aesthetic sensibility when it comes to nature, or perhaps you’re color-blind. Or aesthetic sensibility is simply not part of your nature, which would make you an aesthetophobe or pulchripath, if such words even existed, which they don’t. Maybe you just need to think this through a bit more!
Did you know the historical record shows that human cultures have valued flowers in a special way at least as far back as the ancient Egyptians? Certain blossoms – lotus flowers were a very big deal – were a part of burial ceremonies, and went right into the pyramid with the mummy and all that other important stuff that accompanied the dead into eternity, including the occasional slaves, poor devils. Prominent citizens also had elaborate table arrangements in their palaces, an affectation of the wealthy that continues to this day. The flower as an item of conspicuous consumption even led to the first speculative “bubble” in the history of financial markets, with the tulip craze in Holland that began in 1634. It’s all about “overvalued assets” and “exuberant market enthusiasm” and the result back then was ridiculous prices for certain unusual tulip varieties, until the bubble “burst” in 1637. A few great fortunes had been made but in the end many more were lost. Still, the traders had these lovely posies to display around their Amsterdam townhouses until it was time to compost them, but for an aspiring fortune seeker this was probably small consolation.
Asian religious cultures – Buddhists, Taoists and the like – have long decorated their altars with flowers. The Greeks and Romans would scatter rose petals in the path of soldiers returning victorious from battle, and would you believe it’s been discovered that at some feasts they’d similarly bury the floor of the banquet hall one foot deep? The scent of it might’ve killed more than a few appetites and one wonders if things didn’t get a bit slippery, especially after a few rounds of wine, but the point is flowers have long been a big deal in human culture.
In modern times we have the poet Allen Ginsberg writing an essay in 1965 to guide protesters against the Vietnam war, entitled “How to make a march/spectacle,” in which he describes handing out “masses of flowers” to policemen, the press, politicians, and spectators. A few years later Abbie Hoffman, leading a workshop on nonviolent protest, writes “The cry of ‘flower power’ echoes through the land. We shall not wilt. Let a thousand flowers bloom.” About the same time Scott MacKenzie scores high on the pop charts with a song by John Phillips, “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)” and the big story was the Summer of Love, when the Hippies and the war protesters buried popular culture in flowers and flower imagery in a way the revelers back in ancient Rome might’ve understood. Of course that kind of flower power sort of faded after awhile, the Hippies went on to business school or became lucrative marijuana farmers, and the war ended many years later with the home team winning on the battlefield and not because America’s leaders had been convinced to give peace a chance. In southeast Asia, flower power was probably associated more with the poppies that supported the incredibly lucrative opium trade than any American youth phenomenon.
Okay so all this may just be so much meaningless floral history to you, but what about your mother? You know, the one to whom you just sent roses for our recent Mother’s Day? So maybe you bought her candy instead, but have you still noticed what a huge freight of meaning flowers carry in the current day? Besides corsages at proms and outlandish bouquets at weddings (not to mention the essential role played by “flower girls” at those events) and masses of floral remembrances at funerals, we’ve got lilies at Easter and poinsettias at Christmas. Maybe in your colorless universe none of this stirs the heart, but what about this image of a noble animal honoring its fallen police dog compatriots at the National K-9 Memorial, with the placement of red roses? One could point out that it looks like that blood-red blossom might be be just another doggie treat to the canine brain, but is it not the powerful flowery symbolism that matters here, in a big way?
There are, in fact, endless lists of what various flowers symbolize, and it seems likely that someone has assigned special meaning to every blossoming plant on the planet. The red rose no doubt leads the pack in these matters, suggesting (in no particular order) true love, wisdom, passion, purity, modesty, faithfulness, and constancy. The Bobby Burns poem of 1794 no doubt gave the red (red) rose a promotional boost from which it has benefited to this day, though William Wordsworth’s pitch for the daffodil shortly thereafter, in 1804, suggests flowers were riding an exceptional wave of popularity at the time, at least among those who played with words. Daffodils, by the way, symbolize rebirth, new beginnings, hope, joy, and good luck, in case you were wondering. “Daffodil” also happened to be the model name of a car produced by the DAF company of Holland back in the 1960s. One wonders if they also sold a “Tulip” model, and whether any vehicle with a floral name would ever make it in the macho-influenced American car market.
The many lists of perceived “meanings” can start to get overwhelming after awhile, rooted as they are in centuries of human tradition and folklore. Some seem downright curious, though all are fun in a way. There are no doubt those who are deadly serious about these matters, probably florists most of all. Who knows what thoughts lurk in the minds of florists? For what it’s worth, this non-florist writer’s faves include the hollyhock, which symbolizes ambition, the star of Bethlehem which stands for atonement, rue (regret and sorrow), wolfsbane (misanthropy), and how about the black dahlia, which some claim represents betrayal? Nice! Did you happen to know that the dahlia has inspired at least one novel and two movies, all of them murder mysteries? There’s the Blue Dahlia from 1946, with Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, and the Black Dahlia from 2006, with Scarlett Johanssen, about a gruesome real-life murder that happened in LA in 1947. Leave it to the dahlia and the wolfsbane to suggest that flowers can have a sinister side, that it’s not all love and joy and purity and other such upbeat notions all the time. American florists may be thankful for the love-and-romance theme that makes Valentine’s Day their biggest day of the year, but isn’t it time we concocted a day we can commemorate with dahlias and wolfsbane and perhaps some thistle? In Victorian England, that last one symbolized pain, aggression, and intrusion. Now that Halloween has become just another watered down commercial event, the Dark Side needs a new special day to bring more depth to the tired notion of “saying it with flowers,” don’t you think?
What’s that you say? That maybe there’s more to this whole flower phenomenon than you might’ve thought? That you’d savor people’s bewilderment upon hearing that your new car was a Daffodil? How about presenting a loved one with black dahlias on Valentine’s Day (or any Hallmark holiday, for that matter)? Maybe it’s time to push the envelope a bit further and take a look at Art in Bloom, that bold melange of floral arrangement and revered examples of the visual arts. The results can be fun and fanciful and clever or even beautiful at times, as well as puzzling and odd and almost ridiculous by turns, expanding the whole notion of “creative association.” At worst what one gets is uninspired, which only underscores that the whole concept can be a bit tricky to get right. But in the end the result adds a whole new dimension to the notion of “say it with flowers,” and some of the floral arrangements push the envelope all on their own.
To be honest, Art in Bloom is a clever and borderline gimmicky event that originated a while back at Boston’s own Museum of Fine Arts, home of many splendid examples of human artistic expression from ancient times to now. It has been collecting items for so long that their collections are enormous, and the whole enterprise has benefited from gigantic piles of money amassed by Boston’s upper classes since before America was a country. Harvard U, a local school which you may have heard of, was founded in 1638. From impressionist paintings to Japanese postcards to pre-Columbian works in clay and gold (and Egyptian mummies, lots of mummies), the MFA has it all. One result of such a great amassing is that it must be spread throughout many halls and rooms and nooks and crannies over three floors and unless one systematically visits all of these on multiple visits, one will invariably miss a few things, or a whole lot of things.
This is where the true genius of Art in Bloom comes into play. They cleverly spread the floral arrangements throughout the vast spaces, which requires that the serious visitor to the event cover a lot of ground (amongst crowds of people) to take it all in. One could, of course, do this over several days to get the job done, but busy people tend to take one shot at it, which happens to be our MO as well. Does that imply that we are busy? All retirees are by definition “busy”, though it may not always appear that way. When it comes to Art in Bloom we are definitely all business, taking it on as a kind of highbrow aesthetic athletic event, where part of this is noticing some of the great things we’ve overlooked in the past. The whole enterprise takes on the feel of a scavenger hunt, and a rather special one, at that. So much to see, everywhere you look!
