The language of flowers
“That’s oak leaf, for bravery. I’ve got Veronica and Honeysuckle, for fidelity and affection. And that’s Peony, for shame. She lives under this rock.”
“Did you make that up by yourself?”
“‘Course not. That’s the language of flowers. Everyone knows that.”
“No, they don’t. I don’t.”
“Everyone used to know. They sent each other messages. Like Bluebells means, ‘I’ll always love you’ and Jasmine means ‘We’re friends.’ and Asphodels… Asphodels are for the dead.”
These are the words of a best selling author Neil Gaiman, known for his works like Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book. This particular excerpt is taken from Free Country: A Tale of The Children’s Crusade, a singularly enchanting piece of prose. What is interesting in this excerpt is the vivid description of floriography that it affords the reader. Floriography is nothing but is a means of cryptological communication through the use or arrangement of flowers. This practice dates back centuries across generations and regions, spanning Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
Online delivery of flowers has sparked a new interest among fringe consumers in this ancient practice. More and more people are re discovering the joy that is sending a secret message in the form of delicate and scented flowers. Previously the only option to send flowers was either personal delivery or using the post, and both involved considerable time and effort. In the case of the post especially, the flowers would be utterly crushed and wilted by the time they reached the receiver. If that did not happen, they would surely begin decomposing and their scent and colour would be lost, as the postal delivery took a considerable amount of time. However online flower delivery in Mumbai has taken care of these problems of the existing infrastructure by creating a specialised system which recognises the need for urgency in case of flower delivery and also ensures that the flowers themselves survive in perfect health to be appreciated by the recipient of the lovely bouquet. By ensuring that the problems of the previous system are resolved properly and that the bouquets can be a viable transportable commodity, online delivery of flowers has created a newfound interest in a lost art that would otherwise have surely gone the way of the dodo bird.
These new systems have also created facilities to send birthday flowers online. That means that now you are free to pick and choose between all kinds of exotic flowers to make your own personal bouquet and send it within a day to the birthday boy or birthday girl. This is the method that most floriographists use to send warm personal wishes through the miracles of the inter net. Indeed, flower delivery in Mumbai and other cities has made it possible to re invent and re imagine lost arts and forms of communication that were previously discarded because of their infeasibility and inconvenience. The language of flowers in diverse, and now quite accessible as well.
