Flowers have long been more than decoration. Across Europe, Asia, and Africa, people have attached meanings to blooms and used their arrangements to communicate hidden messages.
From Ottoman Messages to Victorian Bouquets
A major revival began with the Ottoman Turkish tradition of sélam, sometimes called Turkish love letters. Objects such as flowers, locks of hair, and pearls were wrapped in a handkerchief. Each object suggested a rhyming word, allowing the receiver to assemble a poetic message.
This idea reached Europe through travelers including Mary Wortley Montagu, who brought it to England from Constantinople in 1718. During the Victorian era, floral dictionaries transformed the custom into a fashionable code. A small bouquet could express feelings that polite society made difficult to say aloud.
A Code of Flowers—and Gestures
Red roses could suggest romantic love, while pink roses implied lesser affection, white roses virtue, and yellow roses friendship or devotion. Even placement mattered: a tussie-mussie pinned over the heart declared love, while one worn at the bosom signaled friendship. Flowers given with the right hand meant “yes”; the left meant “no.”
A Global Symbolic Language
There was never one universal dictionary. In Japanese Hanakotoba, cherry blossoms evoke life’s fleeting beauty, while in Chinese art the peony represents wealth and nobility. The lotus, emerging cleanly from muddy water, symbolizes purity and spiritual awakening in Buddhist traditions.
Artists and writers—from Shakespeare to Banksy—have used flowers to speak about grief, mortality, conflict, and hope. The coded bouquet may have faded, but the impulse remains: humans continually turn nature into a language for emotions that words cannot contain.