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The Language of Flowers: Status-Signaling, Virtue-Signaling, Etc
Tulip by Quartl, Wikimedia Commons, Cropped
Anyone imagining that just any sort of flowers can be presented in the front of a house without status jeopardy would be wrong. Upper-middle-class flowers are rhododendrons, tiger lilies, amaryllis, columbine, clematis, and roses, except for bright-red ones. One way to learn which flowers are vulgar is to notice the varieties favored on Sunday-morning TV religious programs like Rex Humbard’s or Robert Schuller’s. There you will see primarily geraniums (red are lower than pink), poinsettias, and chrysanthemums, and you will know instantly, without even attending to the quality of the discourse, that you are looking at a high-prole setup. Other prole flowers include anything too vividly red, like red tulips. Declassed also are phlox, zinnias, salvia, gladioli, begonias, dahlias, fuchsias, and petunias. Members of the middle class will sometimes hope to mitigate the vulgarity of bright-red flowers by planting them in a rotting wheelbarrow or rowboat displayed on the front lawn, but seldom with success.
Thus do I discover that I grew up in a high-prole setup without even realizing it. Mums, poinsettias, and Play-Doh-red geraniums were staples among our potted plants and (except for poinsettias) outside garden. I’ve always been fond of flowers too vividly red, especially tulips – it was a great sadness to me in my childhood that we had rabbits who’d eat any tulip, no matter how prole, before it could bloom. I admit to hating zinnias while loving columbines and tiger lilies, so perhaps I’m not hopelessly déclassée. It’s also true the work containing this stunning classification-by-blossom was published in 1983 and fashions change. Still, this paragraph lives on in people’s online essays, even though the work containing it is no longer available online (it once was).
But is any of it true? Was any of it true? I was born in the 80s. If it was true back then, I should have noticed. Not because I could discern class distinctions well as a child, but because I noticed flowers, which were plentiful in our neighborhood. I drew them and painted them, as girls do, especially those splashy red tulips with fiery black-and-gold hearts. I tried to garden without killing them (mixed success there). And I was the child to scold if our neon-red geraniums wilted, since keeping them watered and deadheaded was my simple, undemanding chore.
Now it’s true we grew up middlebrow in what was supposedly a highbrow town (supposedly) and my parents nursed a rebellious streak. My mom could take perverse pride in preferring the cheerful and showy to the allegedly “elegant”, especially since her own mother cultivated an astringent “good taste” in home décor (while nonetheless growing Play-Doh-red geraniums, come to think of it). But I had never thought to judge flower preferences beyond, you like what you like. I recognize that signaling status is a thing, and that it’s bound up with signaling “virtue” of one kind or another (perhaps simply the “virtue” of not being “prole”), but I ask you, is the language of flowers really this fraught?
If so, how do we tell?
If not, what else might be less fraught than is commonly supposed?
Published in Humor
No, it can’t be as simple as you like what you like. But what is? Is musical taste in any meaningful sense individual in a world of mass phenomena?
No, they’re not right about the chrysanthemum. Means golden flower! Was the imperial flower in China. Talk about absurd status.
Makes me wonder what else they’re not right about. I wonder where the author lived to be able to make this observation:
Avid gardeners often do turn found objects into follies or unusual containers, but in what neighborhood do you live where rowboat container gardens are so commonplace you can distinguish the meaning behind red-flowered rowboat gardens and non-red-flowered rowboat gardens? Plonking an entire flippin’ rowboat in your front yard is rather different from potting plants in a wheelbarrow, no matter how rotted. (Although, rotted or not, I’d be worried about my wheelbarrow container garden tipping over, personally.)
I’ve got roses and (volunteer) penstemons. What’s that make me?
Poinsettias did well for the Eckes.
I think we grow whatever rabbits, deer, and bugs don’t like to eat. :)
Those rougephobes.
My dad was an avid gardener, but favored veggies to blooms. We had no sidewalk, so in front of the retaining wall and out to the street, he planted peppers, beans, cukes, Brussels sprouts, strawberries, even corn one year. An odd sight in suburban NJ.
I fear to ask where that places us in the social hierarchy.
I find it hard to believe that a people that segregate among economic lines will not cultivate affectations that emphasize the separation. Including concerning flowers. Of course, that cannot be a caste separation, but it’ll do.
I also find no difficulty believing that taste will separate social classes–issuing not merely by chance or market forces or social segregation, but from intuitions that come with very different experiences… What I find very difficult to believe is that this would matter in America.
The Japanese Royal Family’s crest contains the chrysanthemum.
The easiest example where it seems to matter in America is lawn-mowing. Among the elites in regions of America where prairies and oak savannas are indigenous, landscaping your property with prairie plants took awhile to become accepted, since it can look like an unmowed lawn, but now it’s considered a statement about valuing native terrain to those in the know. If you tried to grow a prairie in your yard in a non-elite neighborhood, the reaction is much more likely to be, “Why don’tcha mow your lawn, ya lazy slob?”
Most people don’t know. No one cares, except that your garden should be well taken care of. Grow whatever you like, just take care to weed and prune.
Of course it can. That’s what I plant – fruit, flowers, etc.
starfruit,
lemons, limes, oranges. I used to have guava, avocado, dragon fruit, mango and papaya, but a hard frost killed them all off.
Our driveway used to be lined with red hibiscus – hard to get gaudier than that.
They died when we had a problem with the irrigation system during the dry season while we were out of town. We’re replacing them with bougainvillea, red, purple, pink, yellow, all jumbled together.
I’m sure some would think we’re low class for our various gaudy flowers and fruiting trees.
But I don’t care.
As I say, I was deplorable before it was cool.
My parents’ working class home in a working class town was surrounded by tiger lilies, and we also had a not-red rose bush! We were actually upper class, and our flowers prove it! I can’t wait to tell them :)
Thing is, flower garden trends change over time, so those high-class perennials you had a few years ago, are now suddenly popping up in even the trailer court gardens. You’d better find something sufficiently exotic yet still hardy to your zone to impress the local garden club.
I have a funny story about that.
Buckthorn is an ornamental thicket-forming tree or shrub whose putative ornamental value is in fact quite dubious. Moreover, especially in the American midwest, buckthorn is an extremely invasive grower, easily escaping captivity and spoiling our forests – that is, it’s a weed species. The previous owners of my childhood homestead had, for some reason, planted buckthorn as an ornamental screen, and we, upon moving in, didn’t realize the danger and failed to take the extremely aggressive steps needed to keep it in its place – honestly, the most effective step is outright removal of every last bit of buckthorn on your property, planted intentionally or not. Dad, a great (and apparently indiscriminate) lover of trees, considered the buckthorns “trees” once they got big enough, and got angry if he noticed one was cut down. No, he said, they just need pruning to bring out their beauty.
Bless him. We pruned them as well as we could, and surreptitiously removed them when we thought he wouldn’t notice. Sometimes he noticed and all hell broke loose. I finally managed to make one buckthorn Dad noticed too much to remove ornamental during summer visits home from college, by lopping off so many leafy portions any other tree would have died. It turns out barely-alive buckthorn is nearly the best kind of buckthorn (the best buckthorn is still a dead buckthorn).
I notice my garden tends to be mostly yellows and purples. With Rudbeckia and Liatris being the most prominent. But that’s because they’re nearly fool-proof.
I’ve got a strong desire to track down the original author and shoot out his porch light.
Is that déclassé?
Don’t care.
Well, now I’m envious.
And yes, banana flowers are awesomely weird, though I’ve not much fondness for bananas as a fruit.
So where do my lovely yellow dandelions put me on the class ladder? They do look so nice alongside the white and purple clover flowers!
Who has time for gardening these days?
Penstemons? I love bright-red penstemons! The blue ones are nice, too. Other colors… eh, OK…
We love rudbeckia. I wanted to pick some for my wedding bouquet, but on the advice of a florist, settled for lookalikes (asters?) which apparently last longer when cut.
From BC Comics:
“Whatcha eatin’?”
“Oranges. Whatcha eatin’?”
(Looking at his grapes) “Purples.”
Wish I could find that cartoon.
Where do you live? I’m envious!
On bananas – when I lived in Africa, on trips between towns I would stop at local markets for the fruits and local produce. Bananas were always sold in huge stalks – 30 to 40 lbs. And they were about $5. No way you could eat all of them, so you gave them away. But tree-ripened bananas are incredibly sweet and not like the grocery store stuff.
As for fertilizer, you need some cows.
I planted 3 red ones (one of which was slightly different). One made it and gave me the volunteers. Found some blue and purple ones out on a hike. I think it is a purple one waiting to be planted. I hope to get some California poppies in. After the rains we’ve had, I’m playing a little of the “let’s not pull all the weeds until we know what type of wild flower it it” game.
We once got a beautiful mexican shellflower growing in our garden through this game. So pretty! So… vulgar??? Who cares?!
They look like some sort of iris/rhizome?
Yes, they’re in Iridaceae.
Even better if it’s not hardy. Unless it dies.
The lychee is also a magnificent tree. Easily my favorite in the yard.
South Florida part of the year – that’s where the fruit and flowers are. It might be the varieties, rather than tree ripening. I’ve never had any luck with that – we’ve learned to cut them off as they are getting close, then hanging them in the summer kitchen to finish ripening, then separating them as much as possible to slow the ripening process when the first ones ripen. The grocery stuff is a hybrid that can survive the transport required to get them to market, but tend to taste like paste. As you say, native varieties have delicious flavor and are very sweet.
How high in potassium is cow manure? I think that’s the critical nutrient. I blend my own fertilizer with a high potassium content. With a normal fertilizer they grow and flower, but don’t set fruit. Without that they grow nicely for a year or two, then exhaust our soil and sort of grow, but look pretty scraggly.
Tigridia?
Yep. And good point – “Mexican shellflower” might be racist.