Before the advent of international cultivation systems and the capability to move products via air freight, the flowers were matched to the seasonal patterns. The roses that were bloomed during Saint Valentine's Day were something unanticipated, and extremely costly.
In a very old age at the age of 89, Queen Mother wrote a letter to the Queen Mother about her youthful years:
I can remember dancing with a lovely youthful American on the night of Lady Powis Ball at Berkeley Square (aged 17) and the awe and excitement on the following day, an entire bouquet of red roses came in! The time was when flowers were extremely scarce!
Where did the tradition of flower-filled gifts originate from? And do they pose a risk to an eco-conscious society now?
Vase of Flowers in a Window, Ambrosius Bosschaert (1618) Public Domain
Roses in culture and in society
A Roman who was killed for his faith on the 14th of February AD 269; St. Valentine was praised through Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century as a symbol of courtly love. The red rose signifies sacrifice and blood and also a sense of devotion. The custom of flowers that have anything connected to love came to the West more than traditional world.
The majority of our lovely roses stem from hugely tall single-petalled, tall specimens that were initially discovered in northern and south central China. Simple varieties are also present throughout Europe in addition to North Africa. They needed crossings and hybridization to produce the numerous varieties we have in the present. It is possible to say that the flowers we enjoy today as natural was for centuries the result of conquests and trade.
The rose - stunning because of its beautiful thorns - was everywhere in the early floral designs. In Greek mythology, it was tied into the cloth Andromache designed for Hector during the time that he passed away in Troy.
The commercial trade in flowers started in Hellenistic times. Egypt was the first to grow mass-produced flowers. They sent them far-distance to perform rituals and ceremonies, such as the wearing of garland crowns.
Hector and Andromache - Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini (1675-1741) Wikimedia Commons
Early Christians were wary of flowers.
Greek and Roman males and females were adorned with floral crowns, later used as sacrifices to the deceased. It was considered to be pagan by those who were early in the Christian Church. St Jerome and St Ambrose were skeptical about flowers placed on tombs. They raised fears of luxurious. It was also suspect because it was a part of it being part of Crown of Thorns worn at the Crucifixion. The wicked Roman the Emperor Heliogabalus was believed to have drowned his diners with violets and roses he released from a false ceiling. The exotic flowers were about debauchery and not about morality.
The roots of botany were laid in both China in China as well as Greece. Plant knowledge declined dramatically following the fall of the classic world to the West. Islam as well as The Near East were less disrupted by the loss of cities and had a rich tradition of cultivation and trade in botanicals particularly during between the 9th and 8th century AD. The rose appears stylised on the well-known Persian carpets.
Learn more: The fascinating background of our fascination with the luxury
China is often referred to by collectors of plants"the "flowering land", had one of the greatest diversity of flowers, as because of its geology as well as the gardening skills cultivated by the literati classes. In China was the rose azalea, camellia, the chrysanthemum, the magnolia and a variety of new varieties of roses.
The culture of China flowers were always positive. "Hua" can mean a flower, a fireworks border, a decorative one or an image of cotton as well as refer to courtesans or women. Han ladies wore large bouquets of flowers in their hairs, artificial or fresh and their makeup included petals and flowers. Courtesans, who worked on flower-filled barges were named for blooms.
The rose was revived during the Christian West during the 13th century. In Gothic art the stained-glass rose window inside the cathedral was a resemblance to this flower.
Detail in Chinese artist Ma Yuan's On a Mountain Path in the springtime. 1190-1225 CE. Silk and ink. (National Museum, Taipei, Taiwan). Public Domain
Men loved flowers just as than women.
Thirteenth-century French romances tell of young men in shirts embellished with flowers. at the time, it was the time when Paris guild of the hatters made male hats that were embellished with peacock feathers and fresh flowers. The young men who decorate their straw hats by adding flowers in summer is still a popular tradition at the famed English Eton school. Eton.
The flower painting emerged as an independent European style within the Ghent-Bruges School of decorators for manuscripts after 1475. There were many Flemish artists were specialized in the painting of the Virgin, surrounded by the wreath or garland. The inclusion of bees insects, butterflies, and worms were a symbol of the passing of time as well as a memorial.
Flowers highlighted the distinction between external and internal beauty that is typical of classical sources. In the Sixth Century, Roman theologian Boethius wrote:
Beauty is fleeting and swift, and more mysterious than the flow of spring flowers". This is the reason why we are so drawn to flowers. They speak of life, and simultaneously, decay and death.
The 17th century was when floral plants were considered essential amenities for merchants and rulers. Patrons and collectors traveled between important botanical centers like Prague, London, Leiden, Brussels, Antwerp, Middleburg, Milan and Paris to learn about this revolutionary collection method and science. The ethnologist Jack Goody claims, was an advanced system that resulted in floriography, the European flower language. The red rose signifies love, while the white rose is love.
French Rose and Apple, Joris Hoefnagel (1561-1562). Wikimedia Commons
"Too true too true, too perfect' 19th-century fashion and flowers
In the 19th century Paris the market for flowers grew to a biweekly schedule, complete with corner booths, flavored with the erotic appeals of the flower traders who were on in the streets.
The large blooms like lilacs, Easter lilies and the huge, fragrant Bourbon roses were considered the epitome of luxurious. The seasons were shorter and flowers were less plentiful than today even though the wealthy attempted to confine plants to their own hothouses. The popularity of flowers was important. There were 100 florists in St Petersburg in 1912 - trains carried out-of-season blooms up on the St Petersburg-Paris-Nice express.
A flower market along the Seine by George Fraipont. Wikimedia Commons
Women of mature age were not permitted to wear real flowers, which was the right of the young, but artificial ones that were scattered in their fabrics and fashioned into decorative fabric.
Nowadays, flowers can be purchased from corner shops each day. A majority of what you will find in shops is not produced locally. A large portion of it was planted by farmers in South America or South Africa transported to Dutch wholesale markets, and then returned in the south hemisphere. The cultivation of flowers involves large amounts of pesticides, water and other chemicals and usually involves low-paid labor across the world's developing. We could all cultivate a few flowers on our own and return to the simpler times in our grandparents' time in the past, which was a time when flowers were scarce, but were also loved.
If your bouquet of flowers hasn't been delivered for Valentine's Day, keep this in mind: Mizza Bricard, who was a part of Christian Dior in the 1950s, was once quoted as saying:
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