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A Look at Love's Long Romance with Flowers
The act of giving flowers is truly prehistoric. In the 1950s, traces of cornflowers
and hyacinth were found buried with a 60,000 year-old Neanderthal corpse. The discovery
of the grave lends importance not only to the study of the physical pre-man, but also
his rituals, honoring the flower as possibly the earliest tangible symbol of adoration.
Flowers seem to represent a link between gods and mortals in Greek mythology.
Narcissus was transformed into a flower to both punish his vanity and preserve
his beauty. Aphrodite gave a red rose to her son Eros, beginning the flower's long
association with love. A beautiful boy named Hyacinth was battled over by gods
before being struck and killed by a discus, and from his blood sprung the wild and
fragrant Hyacinth flower. Similarly, a Persian legend tells of Tulips forming from
drops of blood that symbolized a lover's vow.
In "A Midsummer Night's Dream," pansies placed over the eyes of one in slumber
induced passion for the one who stirred him. And by the end of the Romantic period,
flowers were used as a secret code between suppressed lovers. The number of leaves in a
bouquet could suggest a time and date for a secret meeting, and the blossoms would
forecast the emotion of the union.
Today, giving and receiving flowers is as an emotional experience as ever. For all
of the science that has evolved in the cultivation of flowers, their captured beauty
seems to only increase with time. And while styles and social codes continually assign
new meanings to the blossoms, they exist as an eternal "I love you," at least as popular
now as they were 60,000 years ago.
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