CHAPTER XIV.
PLANT LANGUAGE.
Plant language, as expressive of the various traits of human character,
can boast of a world-wide and antique history. It is not surprising that
flowers, the varied and lovely productions of nature's dainty handiwork,
should have been employed as symbolic emblems, and most aptly
indicative oftentimes of what words when even most wisely chosen can
ill convey; for as Tennyson remarks:--
"Any man that walks the mead
In bud, or blade, or bloom, may find
A meaning suited to his mind."
Hence, whether we turn to the pages of the Sacred Volume, or to the
early Greek writings, we find the symbolism of flowers most eloquently
illustrated, while Persian poetry is rich in allusions of the same kind.
Indeed, as Mr. Ingram has remarked in his "Flora Symbolica,"[1]—Every
age and every clime has promulgated its own peculiar system of floral
signs, and it has been said that the language of flowers is as old as the
days of Adam; having, also, thousands of years ago, existed in the
Indian, Egyptian, and Chaldean civilisations which have long since
passed away. He further adds how the Chinese, whose, "chronicles
antedate the historic records of all other nations, seem to have had a
simple but complete mode of communicating ideas by means of
florigraphic signs;" whereas, "the monuments of the old Assyrian and
Egyptian races bear upon their venerable surfaces a code of floral
telegraphy whose hieroglyphical meaning is veiled or but dimly guessed
at in our day." The subject is an extensive one, and also enters largely
into the ceremonial use of flowers, many of which were purposely
selected for certain rites from their long-established symbolical character.
At the same time, it must be remembered that many plants have had a
meaning attached to them by poets and others, who have by a license of
their own made them to represent certain sentiments and ideas for which
there is no authority save their own fancy.
Hence in numerous instances a meaning, wholly misguiding, has
been assigned to various plants, and has given rise to much confusion.
This, too, it may be added, is the case in other countries as well as our
own.
Furthermore, as M. de Gubernatis observes, "there exist a great
number of books which pretend to explain the language of flowers,