The Language of Flowers by Karla Stover

            
Murder in Tacoma WA.              Murder on Hood Canal   Gothic Mystery

and a bunch of shorts on Amazon

"I need an idea for my blog," I said to my husband.

"Why not flowers," he said, after a moment's reflection."

At the time, we were hiking in the woods and and admiring a native shrub called Ocean spray.

Where we live, the first thing to bloom is camas, a beautiful blue flower that was once very important to the local Native American diet. It's followed by Scotch broom, a really invasive shrub with pretty yellow blooms. A group of nuns who settled in Steilacoom, WA. get the blame for bringing in the seeds but they could just as well been in on the clothing sailors wore (the seeds not the nuns).

Rhododendrons follow, then daisies, fox glove, sweet peas and now the Ocean spray which is a low-growing shrub of droopy cream-colored flowers. However, none of these have anything to do with the language of flowers.

When I was little and we were poor, new books were rare. Instead, I inherited my mother's from when she was a girl. One of them had four complete books in one: Ruth Fielding and the Red Mill; Billie Bradley and her Inheritance; Peggy Lee and Michael; and Linger-Nots and the Mystery House. In those days, children's books didn't have to have  message; they just told stories. In the case of the Mystery House, it was an old home with a hidden room. The Linger-Nots found the room by decoding a sampler based on the flowers the maker had stitched in. I thought that was fascinating.

Back then, researching was much more difficult than it is now, but eventually I stumbled on The Language of Flowers illustrated by Kate Greenaway and published in 1884. It's still available and here's how Amazon describes the book:

 "Presents one of the most enchanting customs of the early 19th century - communicating through flowers instead of words. Hundreds of plants and flowers were given meaning ranging from the warm, simple "I love" of the red chrysanthemum to the disquieting message of the currant "thy frown will kill me." The book glows with Kate Greenaway's exquisite illustrations of the Victorian world from her 1884 book, Language of Flowers. An alphabetical listing of over 700 flowers and plants with their meanings - and a cross-index by meanings." It goes on to say, " shares the tradition, sparked by renewed Victoria era interest in botany and exotic plants and of using flowers as a means of covert communication [that means flirting or courting]an insight into a bygone era when the gift of Tamsy [ supposed to be tansy] was a declaration of war, and a Garden Daisy meant 'I share your sentiments,'this text is a real treasure."

The idea so intrigued me, I wrote a short story, a murder mystery where before she dies conveniently in her conservatory, the murder victim up ends pots of flowers in order to tell 'who dun it.' I called it "Flower Power" and sold it to a now defunct magazine for a minuscule amount.

So, what are the woods and fields where we walk telling us? Well, the rhododendrons are saying, "beware, danger and the wild daisies proclaim "I will think of it" (there are 5 different kinds of daisies in the book, each with its own meaning). The foxgloves aren't buying that, they're boldly declaring "insincerity." They might also be slamming the sweet pea's "delicate pleasures."

Flowers are important for novelists. Several years ago I read a novel-based-on-fact about a woman named Hulda Kruger who develop an important lilac garden in Woodland Washington one hundred or so years ago. The author had Hulda creating a bouquet out of hyacinths, a spring bloomer and other things that bloom in autumn. The blatant inaccuracy totally ruined the book for me.

I wonder if anyone knows or even cares about this totally cool bit of history. If so, here's a message from me, "I wish you Sweet Basil and Spruce Pine. May coronella . . . . . . . . . .