Down the ages, human emotions have found great expressions through the custom of giving flowers or bouquets. Flowers and bouquets have acted as great gifts for birthdays and anniversaries, and are also useful for making personal gestures like conveying heartiest congratulations, expressing apologies or simply making someone happy.
Archaeological evidence collected from historical sites points towards the beginnings of this tradition to the prehistoric era. Flowers have always occupied an important place in ancient Rome and Egypt and in the glorious civilizations of ancient Greece and China whose legends and folklore clearly exhibit this custom. Giving flowers was considered the best way to communicate one's thoughts in these cultures. Greek mythology is filled with mentions of certain flowers that were thought to be representations of gods and goddesses.
The Middle Ages saw a furtherance of this custom, and France and England were chiefly responsible for carrying this tradition down the ages. The modern custom of giving a meaning to each flower is believed to have been imported to Europe after the French and the British experienced it in Turkey.
The tradition of flower giving scaled new heights in the Victorian era. Demonstrating feelings in words and publicly was not considered as good manners during the Victorian era, and thus people used subtle means to express their feelings in the form of gifting flowers or bouquets.
The Victorians devised many rules for gifting flowers or bouquets and stuck to them with great zeal. For example, if you bought an elegant bouquet of red roses from the florist and gave it to your beloved upside down, she will surely be angry with you. Red roses, that otherwise depict love, can symbolize anger if presented upside down. In fact, a large number of books were written and disseminated on the language of flowers in the 19th century.
Time has not been able to diminish this tradition, and people in the present times still consider flowers to be the most effective means to show their feelings. Today we have arrived at a stage where meaning is assigned to many flowers, and rules and regulations in this custom are more significant than they ever were. An elegantly presented bouquet of red roses is believed to depict love while lilies represent purity and grace. On the other hand, a yellow rose depicts friendship while a single marigold depicts grief.
Any tract of land can be made suitable for cultivating any flower, thanks to modern science and technology. If you live in Singapore, and step into any Singapore flower shop, you will be besieged by the sheer variety of flowers available that can express almost any human feeling.
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