Short Stuff: Victorian Flower Language

What do you do when you want to tell someone you’re smitten with them but you live in a society so repressive decorum prevents you from even speaking such things? Why, you can say it with flowers! And that’s just what people in the Victorian Era did. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:09Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and that's all that needs mentioning today because it's just us, so this is short stuff.

• 1:16Speaker 03

  That's right. And by the way, I wanted to thank you for sending over that beautiful nosegay of wilted white roses delivered upside down with a ribbon to the left.

• 1:28Josh Clark?

  Well, may I ask where on your chest are you wearing it?

• 1:31Speaker 03

  Near my bodice.

• 1:33Josh Clark?

  In the center or?

• 1:35Speaker 03

  Right in the center, baby.

• 1:37Josh Clark?

  Well, I guess we're good friends, then. I can live with that. Although, I'm not sure what I was saying with the whole thing. It's kind of confusing.

• 1:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'd have to get out a code decoder book or whatever.

• 1:47Josh Clark?

  Well, they had those, Chuck. What we're talking about is florography, and there were a lot of florography books because it turns out florography was a huge deal in the Victorian and Regency areas. I guess between a couple of decades on either side of the 19th and 20th century divide, the DMZ of those centuries, as it were.

• 2:09Josh Clark?

  This was, it was really popular to send unspoken messages using flowers.

• 2:15Speaker 03

  That's right. Unspoken because at the time, in the UK, and parts of the US, obviously, in Europe, in certain, you know, high societies mainly, you could not speak these things aloud a lot of times. It was untoward. So you had to have a coded way of talking to each other. And if you're thinking like, oh, yeah, you send flowers to someone and that means something.

• 2:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 2:37Speaker 03

  It goes deep. I mean, it is literally a code. And that's what I was kind of referring to with the upside down and the wilted and the where the ribbon's tied. Like, all that stuff means something.

• 2:48Josh Clark?

  It does. Yeah. It is quite deep. And you can send quite complex messages. And we'll kind of show what we're talking about. But first, I want to shout out some great sources that helped with this. Farmers Almanac, the Iowa State University Extension, Petal Republic, it's a great name, author Sarah on Substack, Clive Rose, Georgina Garden Center, Thursde D, just the D, Flower Meaning, and Historical Holly, all helped with this. So thanks to all of you.

• 3:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's wonderful. So this is nothing new, or was nothing new back then. Coded messages through flowers goes back to the 1600s, at least, in the Ottoman Empire, when they had a tradition called Selam, or Selam, S-E-L-A-M, which was a game where, between the members of the harem of Constantinople, where they would send flowers attached with like rhymes and meanings and stuff like that to communicate with one another.

• 3:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Which made sense because a lot of them couldn't read or write. So flowers did the talking for them. And this actually spread from the Ottoman Empire to Europe via one single person, a British aristocrat who was married to the British ambassador to Turkey. Her name was Lady Mary Wortley. And she would send back letters to friends and family describing all of the new and exotic customs of this land that she had moved to. She moved to Constantinople. And among them was a description of Selam, or Selam, Selam. How did you say it?

• 4:21Speaker 03

  I said Selam or Selam. I'm not sure if it's a long or shorty.

• 4:24Josh Clark?

  Well, the flower code that the harem workers had come up with. She wrote a letter about that. And somebody got it and said, this is great. I want to tell everybody in the UK about it.

• 4:35Speaker 03

  That's right. And by the way, I mentioned a couple of puns in the Operation Paul Bunyan episode.

• 4:44Speaker 03

  Which one were you thinking? Cause you said you remembered one.

• 4:47Josh Clark?

  That the code stems back.

• 4:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was one.

• 4:52Josh Clark?

  That's the only one I can think of.

• 4:54Speaker 03

  Well, no, here's the other one. Botany was a growing field.

• 4:58Josh Clark?

  How did I miss that?

• 4:59Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 4:59Josh Clark?

  My pun censor is covered with dirt.

• 5:03Speaker 03

  Well, no, that's good. You want to pack some mud on that thing.

• 5:06Josh Clark?

  I know, but I don't like walking past stuff. I like to take part, you know, be involved in the mix.

• 5:13Speaker 03

  So Botany was a growing field. And florography was, like I said, among certain classes, you know, mainly upper class women, because, you know, it wasn't like the kind of thing that you could really talk about openly in that class. And this is one thing, I haven't seen Emily yet today because she got out of the house early, but I wanted to ask her, because she's, you know, like a lot of Gen X women are obsessed with Jane Austen stuff and Sense and Sensibility and all those series and movies and books. And I wondered if she knew about this, or if they in those, because I've never watched any of them, if they were kind of pointed stuff out, like, oh, he sent the flowers this way and that means this.

• 5:53Josh Clark?

  But that's, I mean, that's the Bronny sisters and Jane Austen used a lot of florography to help kind of develop their characters, which I guess.

• 6:00Speaker 03

  So I guess they did.

• 6:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they definitely did. And the readers at the time probably would have picked up on this, but florography is, it's become so arcane and obscure that modern readers would not pick up on it. But if you learn about florography and you start reading Jane Austen, apparently it'll show up.

• 6:16Speaker 03

  Oh, well, no, that's what I was wondering if in the books and they said like, oh, well, he sent an upside down thing, which means blah, blah, blah.

• 6:22Josh Clark?

  Yes. Yeah, they would. They would do that. I found a quote from Pride and Prejudice from Jane Austen.

• 6:29Speaker 03

  Ooh, can you read it in character?

• 6:31Josh Clark?

  Well, it's the narrator. So sure, I guess I can, because the narrator sounds exactly like me.

• 6:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:37Josh Clark?

  But Elizabeth Bennet is giving a flower to Mr. Darcy and the narrator describes, she gave a red rose to tell him that she loved him. Red rose. Red, red, red, red, red. Rose, rose, rose. Red, red, rose, red, rose, red, rose, red, red, red, red. And then in the, I think the first edition, the word red is just repeated over and over for three pages before it just stops and a new chapter starts.

• 7:05Speaker 03

  That's so hot. Yeah. All right, I need to go cool down. Should we take a break? Yeah, I think so, yeah. All right, we'll come back and tell you about a lot of this, what these coated flowers mean, right after this.

• 7:16Speaker 04

  If you wanna know, then you're in luck. Just listen up to Josh and Chuck. Stuff you should know.

• 7:31Josh Clark?

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• 9:48Josh Clark?

  So Chuck, you mentioned that I gave you a nose gay. Another great word for a nose gay is a tussie mussie. And florography in the Victorian age started to get popular at the same time that tussie mussies and nose gays were popular too. And they're really kind of small, short, tightly bound bouquets that you would kind of wear almost as like a boutonniere or a corsage. And they were made of flowers and herbs. So not just flowers, but herbs had their own meanings too. So like rosemary was for remembrance and mint was for clarity. Moss even had its own meaning, charity or maternal love. Throw a violet in there, maybe for modesty. If you put all those together in a little tussie mussie and gave it to somebody, you

• 10:33Josh Clark?

  would be saying something like, "I modestly ask you to clearly remember me with either charity or maternal love, your pick."

• 10:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, which would be a very confusing message.

• 10:44Josh Clark?

  It would be.

• 10:45Speaker 03

  Paging Dr. Freud on that one.

• 10:47Josh Clark?

  For sure.

• 10:48Speaker 03

  So the, obviously, you know, the type of flower is going to matter. The color of the flower is going to matter. Many messages could be sent. If you wanted to send a message of rejection or disappointment, it could be a yellow carnation or a yellow rose. But if you send a yellow lily, that means that you're just sort of over the moon and walking on air.

• 11:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 11:09Speaker 03

  Obviously, the red rose is going to mean, "I love you." A white rose is purity. A yellow rose is loss of love and a crimson rose is for mourning with M-O-U-R.

• 11:20Josh Clark?

  Right. And I mean, like, that is just skimming the surface, just the color of different types of roses, right, or different color roses. The state that the flowers in mattered a lot too. You may have mentioned, I think, of a withered rose in the tussie mussie I gave you. If you gave somebody just a plain white rose, you could be saying like, "I think you're heavenly. You're very pure and I like that." But if the white rose was withered, you were telling them that they made no impression on you whatsoever, or that you think their beauty is fleeting, so remember that. And then if it was dried, you were saying, "I would rather die than to give in to your advances because I care about my virtue." And I'm sure you could be like, you know, if you gave somebody a withered rose,

• 12:04Josh Clark?

  you'd be like, is this dried or withered? What are you trying to say here? So I don't know how much, how much was like in the beholder's eye?

• 12:13Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, translation is important and, you know, we'll get to that here in a sec. But a thornless rose means you've fallen in love at first sight. A thornless crimson rose means you're mourning, because remember crimson rose was mourning, but you're mourning an unrequited love at first sight.

• 12:29Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 12:30Speaker 03

  And also, the context really matters. Like, you know, you obviously kind of know what's going on between you. It's when you're getting these, or you know, you're seeking clarity, but you, you know, there's an established thing kind of happening here for your own context. So if you get a hydrangea, it can be thanking the receiver for understanding, or that you think they're frigid and heartless.

• 12:51Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 12:52Speaker 03

  So you really got to kind of have a read on the general air of the relationship.

• 12:56Josh Clark?

  Yeah, same with like petunias. You could be saying, you soothe me, or I resent you. So the context definitely mattered. But the reason why like hydrangeas and peonies and almost all of the flowers had multiple meanings was not because they needed to pull double duty because we didn't have enough flowers and enough colors. Like, if you put all those together, you have a mind-boggling number of combinations. So that wasn't it. The reason they had multiple meanings was because there were many, many different florography books. And essentially, a lot of them just assigned different meanings to different flowers.

• 13:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:31Josh Clark?

  So when you gave somebody flowers, especially if there wasn't a lot of context yet, you were just hoping that you guys were working from the same book.

• 13:40Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, that's, that's huge.

• 13:43Josh Clark?

  I think there were 98 different guides, just in the United States alone, that were circulating from 1827 to 1923.

• 13:51Speaker 03

  Not helpful at all.

• 13:52Josh Clark?

  No.

• 13:53Speaker 03

  And then, you know, I also mentioned that they were presented upside down. That also matters. If they are upside down, that's the, it basically says it's opposite day. So I guess you're trying to sort of maybe confuse if like, if mom is looking on and sees these flowers, but it would seem like mom would know about opposite day too. So I'm not really sure, you know, why they would do that. Maybe to throw somebody off the scent. Who knows? How the ribbon was tied also matters. Tied to the left, it's the symbolism is applied to the giver.

• 14:23Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 14:23Speaker 03

  It's tied to the right if it's in reference to the recipient.

• 14:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Yeah, I know. This is how deep it gets. It could also express a lot of negative meanings. And I think that's what you were doing when you handed a bouquet upside down. You'd have to be pretty sharp to put a bunch of mean flowers in and then hand it to the person upside down to let them know you meant the opposite.

• 14:47Speaker 03

  Yeah. But the- It's a lot of trouble to go through.

• 14:49Josh Clark?

  Right. There were like, you could be talking about jealousy with marigolds. You could be expressing distrust with lavender. Orange lily, straight up said, I hate you. You could say, I feel deceived with snapdragons. You could declare war with a flower called a tansy, which I hadn't heard of before, but it's like a bunch, a bunch of like small yellow flowers together on like a single stalk.

• 15:13Speaker 03

  Okay. I thought that might've been a misprint, a pansy, but I literally looked at my computer keyboard and was like, nah, I bet it's, that T and the P are pretty far apart.

• 15:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I just, I didn't know that that flower existed, but by goodness, it does.

• 15:25Speaker 03

  Also, accepting also mattered. So depending on which hand you accepted the flowers with sent a message, which I guess would, I mean, if you're handing them in person, you would know. But if not, you had to have it relayed back to you.

• 15:39Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 15:39Speaker 03

  If you accepted with the right hand, it was a yes. The left hand was a no. If you held the bouquet upside down after getting it, that's rejection. If someone gave you wisteria, maybe like asking for a dance at a, at a dance, you would hold it upside down with your left hand if you wanted to say, no, thank you.

• 15:59Josh Clark?

  Right. Yeah, you were really saying, I'm, I'm passing with that because you're, that's a double no. Although the, the person giving it could be like, is that a double negative? Like a yes?

• 16:10Speaker 03

  Is it opposite day?

• 16:11Josh Clark?

  So you could also, as the receiver, send flowers in return too. Like if somebody actually sent you flowers or a bouquet with a message and didn't physically hand it to you, you could reply with flowers yourselves. Carnations came in handy for that. If you sent a solid colored carnation, it meant yes. A yellow carnation was a big fat no. A striped carnation was letting them down a little easier, but it was still a no. It said, I'm sorry, but I can't be with you.

• 16:39Speaker 03

  I wonder which flower meant, like, you know. Are you, are you down?

• 16:44Josh Clark?

  Uh, there was something like that out there, I guarantee you. I don't know which one.

• 16:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:49Josh Clark?

  But there was definitely something. And then the last part, I asked you where you were wearing your nose gay, and you said in the center of your bodice, which meant, I just want to be friends. But if you had worn it over your heart, Chuck, I would have known that you were saying, I love you right back, buddy.

• 17:04Speaker 03

  Hey, I do love you right back, buddy. Just, you know, not like that.

• 17:07Josh Clark?

  I understand. I, I took my shot.

• 17:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:12Josh Clark?

  I guess then Chuck, uh, short stuff is out?

• 17:16Speaker 03

  I think so.

• 17:20Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 17:35Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it starts with a great deal on an off-road ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 18:06Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.