Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Victorian Flower Language

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

What do you do when you want to tell someone you’re smitten with them but you live in a society so repressive decorum prevents you from even speaking such things? Why, you can say it with flowers! And that’s just what people in the Victorian Era did.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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And that's all that needs mentioning today, because it's just us. So this is short stuff. That's right. And by the way, I wanted to thank you for sending over that beautiful nosegay of wilted white roses delivered upside down with a ribbon to the left.

Well, may I ask where on your chest are you wearing it? And you're my bodice? In the center? Right in the center, baby. Oh, well, I guess we're good friends, then. I can live with that. Although, I'm not sure what I was saying with the whole thing. Yeah, I'd have to get out a decoder book or whatever. Well, they had those, Chuck.

What we're talking about is floreography, and there were a lot of floreography books because it turns out floreography was a huge deal in the Victorian and regency areas, I guess between a couple of decades on either side of the 19th and 20th century divide, the DMZ of those centuries, as it were, it was really popular to send unspoken messages using flowers. That's right. Unspoken because at the time in the UK and parts of the U.S., obviously in Europe, in certain, you know, high societies mainly, you could not speak these things aloud a lot of time. It was untoward.

So you had to have a coded way of talking to each other. And if you're thinking like, oh, yeah, you send flowers to someone and that means something, it goes deep. I mean, it is literally a code. And that's what I was kind of referring to with the upside down and the wilted and where the ribbons tied. Like all that stuff means something. It does. Yeah.

It is quite deep. And you can send quite complex messages. And we'll kind of show what we're talking about. But first, I want to shout out some great sources that helped with this. Farmer's Almanac, the Iowa State University Extension, Petal Republic, it's a great name, author Sarah on Substack, Clive Rose, Georgina Garden Center, Thursday, just the D, flower meaning and historical Holly, all helped with us. So thanks to all of you. Yeah, that's wonderful. So this is nothing new or was nothing new back then.

coded messages through flowers goes back to the 1600s at least in the Ottoman Empire when they had a tradition called Selim, or Selim, S-E-L-A-M, which was a game where between the members of the harem of Constantinople where they would send flowers attached with like rhymes and meanings and stuff like that to communicate with one another. Yeah, which made sense because a lot of them couldn't read or write, so Flowers did the talk and forum. And this actually spread from the Ottoman Empire to Europe via one single person, a British aristocrat who is married to the British ambassador to Turkey. Her name was Lady Mary Wartley. And she would send back letters to friends and family, describing all of the new and exotic customs of this

land that she had moved to. She moved to Constantinople. And among them was a description of Salam or Salam. Selim. How did you say it? I said Selim or Selim. I'm not sure if it's a long or shorthy. Well, the flower code that the harm workers had come up with. She wrote a letter about that and somebody got it and said, this is great. I want to tell everybody in the UK about it. That's right. And by the way, I mentioned a couple of puns in the Operation Paul Bunyan episode. Which one were you thinking? Because you said you remembered one. The code stems back. Yeah, that was one. That's the only one I can think of. Well, no, here's the other one. Botany was a growing field.

How did I miss that? My pun sensor is covered with dirt. Well, no, that's good. You want to pack some mud on that thing. I know, but I don't like walking past stuff. I like to take part, you know, be involved in the mix. So botany was a growing field. And floreography was, like I said, among certain classes, you know, mainly upper class women because, you know, It wasn't like the kind of thing that you could really talk about openly in that class. And this is one thing. I haven't seen Emily yet today because she got out of the house early, but I wanted to ask her because she's, you know, like a lot of Gen X women are obsessed with Jane Austen stuff and sensibility and all those series and movies and books. And I wondered if she knew about this or if they in those, because I've never watched any of them, if they were kind of pointed stuff out like, oh, he sent the flowers this way and that means this.

but that's i mean that's the brawny sisters and jane austin used a lot of floriography to help kind of develop their characters which i guess so i guess they did yeah they definitely did and the readers at the time probably would have picked up on this but fluorography is it's become so arcane and obscure that modern readers would not pick up on it but if you learn about floreography and you start reading jane austin apparently it'll show up oh no that's what i was wondering if in the books and they said like oh well he sent an upside down thing which means blah, blah, blah. Yes.

Yeah, they would do that. I found a quote from Pride and Prejudice from Jane Austen. Oh, can you read it in character? Well, it's the narrator. So sure, I guess I can because the narrator sounds exactly like me. But Elizabeth Bennett is giving a flower to Mr. Darcy. And the narrator describes, she gave a red rose to tell him that she loved him. Red rose, red, red, red, red, red, red, rose, rose, rose, rose.

red red rose red rose red rose red red red and then in the i think the first edition the word red is just repeated over and over for three pages before it just stops and a new chapter starts oh that's so hot yeah uh all right i need to go cool down should we take a break yeah i think so yeah all right we'll come back and tell you about a lot of this uh what these coated flowers mean right after this If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just listen up to Josh and Chuck stuff you should know. I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people. horrible ideas and destructive companies in the history of business.

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or wherever you get your podcast. Hey there, Dr. Jesse Mills here. I'm the director of the men's clinic at UCLA Health. And I want to tell you about my new podcast called The Mailroom. And I'm Jordan, the show's producer. And like a lot of guys, I haven't been to the doctor in many years. I'll be asking the questions we probably should be asking, but aren't.

Because guys usually don't go to the doctor unless a piece of their face is hanging off or they've broken a bone. Depends which bone. Well, that's true. Every week, we're breaking down the unique world of men's health, from testosterone and fitness to diets and fertility and things that happen in the bedroom. You mean sleep? Yeah, something like that, Jordan. We'll talk science without the jargon and get you real answers to the stuff you actually want to. about. It's going to be fun, whether you're 27, 97, or somewhere in between. Men's health is about

more than six packs and supplements. It's about energy, confidence, and connection. We don't just want you to live longer. We want you to live better. So check out the mailroom on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. Stuff you should know. Stuff you should. So, Chuck, you mentioned that I gave you a nosegay. Another great word for a nosegay is a tessie-mussey. And floreography in the Victorian age started to get popular at the same time that Tessie-Mussies and nosegays were popular too.

And they're really kind of small, short, tightly bound bouquets that you would kind of wear almost as like a boutonier or a corsage. Okay. And they were made of flowers and herbs. So not just flowers, but herbs had their own meanings too. So like rosemary was for remembrance and mint was for clarity. Moss even had its own meaning, charity or maternal love, throw a violet in there, maybe for modesty. If you put all those together and the little tussie-mussy and gave it to somebody,

you would be saying something like, I modestly ask you to clearly remember me with either charity or maternal love, your pick. Yeah, which would be a very confusing message. It would be. Paging Dr. Freud on that one. For sure. So obviously, you know, the type of flower is going to matter. The color of the flower is going to matter. Many messages could be sent.

If you wanted to send a message of rejection or disappointment, it could be a yellow carnation or a yellow rose. But if you send a yellow lily, that means that you're just sort of over the moon and walking on air. Yeah. Obviously, the red rose is going to mean, I love you. White rose is purity. A yellow rose is loss of love and a crimson rose is for mourning with MOU are. Right. And I mean like that is just skimming the surface, just the color of different types of roses, right?

Or different color roses. The state that the flowers in mattered a lot, too. You may mention, I think, of a withered rose in the Tussie-Mussie I gave you. If you gave somebody just a plain white rose, you could be saying like, I think you're heavenly. You're very pure and I like that. But if the white rose was withered, you were telling them that they made no impression on you whatsoever or that you think their beauty is fleeting. So remember that. And then if it was dried, you were saying I would rather die than to give in to your advances because I care about my virtue. And I'm sure you could be like, you know, if you gave somebody a withered rose, you'd be like, is this dried or withered? What are you trying to say here? So I don't know how much.

How much was like in the beholder's eye? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, translation is important, and, you know, we'll get to that here in a sec. But a thornless rose means you've fallen in love at first sight. Thornless crimson rose means your mourning, because remember crimson rose this morning, but you're mourning an unrequited love at first sight. Right. And also the context really matters. Like, you know, you obviously kind of know what's going on between you. It's when you're getting these, or, you know, you're seeking clarity, but, you know, there's an established thing kind of happening here for your own context. So if you get a hydrangea, it can be thanking the receiver for understanding or that you think they're frigid and heartless. So you really got to kind of have a read on the general error of the relationship. Yeah, same with like petunias.

You could be saying, you soothe me or I resent you. So the context definitely mattered. But the reason why like hydrangeas and peonies and almost all of the flowers had multiple meanings was not because they needed to pull double duty, because we didn't have enough flowers and enough colors. Like, if you put all those together, you have a mind-boggling number of combinations. So that wasn't it. The reason they had multiple meanings

was because there were many, many different floreography books, and essentially a lot of them just assigned different meanings to different flowers. Yeah. So when you gave somebody flowers, especially if there wasn't a lot of context yet, you were just hoping that you guys were working from the same book. Yeah.

I mean, that's huge. I think there were 98 different guides just in the United States alone that were circulating from 1827 to 1923. Not helpful at all. And then, you know, I also mentioned that they were presented upside down. That also matters. If they are upside down, it basically says it's opposite day. So I guess you're trying to sort of maybe confuse if, like, if Mum is looking on and sees these flowers. But it would seem like Mum would know about opposite day, too.

so I'm not really sure you know why they would do that maybe to throw somebody off the scent who knows how the ribbon was tied also matters tied to the left the symbolism is applied

to the giver it's tied to the right if it's in reference to the recipient yeah yeah I know this is how deep it gets it could also

express a lot of negative meanings and I think that's what you were doing when you handed a bouquet upside down you'd have to be pretty sharp to put a bunch of mean flowers in and then hand it to the person upside down to let them know you meant the opposite. Yeah. There's a lot of trouble to go through.

Right. There were like you could be talking about jealousy with marigolds. You could be expressing distrust with lavender, orange lily, straight up said, I hate you. You could say, I feel deceived with Snapdragons. You could declare war with a flower called a Tanzi, which I hadn't heard of before, but it's like a bunch of like small yellow flowers. together on like a single stalk. Okay. I thought that might have been a misprint

pansy, but I literally looked at my computer keyboard and was like, nah, I bet it's, that T and the P are pretty far apart. Yeah, I just, I didn't know that that flower existed, but by goodness it does. Also accepting also mattered. So, depending on which hand you accepted the flowers

with sent a message, which I guess would, I mean, if you're handing them in person, you would know, but if not, you had to have it relayed back to you. Yeah. If you accepted with the right hand, it was a yes. The left hand was a no. If you held the bouquet upside down after getting it, that's rejection.

If someone gave you wisteria, maybe, like, asking for a dance at a dance, you would hold it upside down with your left hand if you wanted to say, no, thank you. Right. Yeah, you were really saying, I'm passing with that because that's a double no. Although the person giving, it could be like, is that a double negative? Like a yes? Is it opposite day? So you could also, as the receiver, send flowers in return, too. Like if somebody actually sent you flowers or a bouquet with a message and didn't physically hand it to you, you could reply with flowers yourselves.

Carnations came in handy for that. If you sent a solid colored carnation, it meant yes. A yellow carnation was a big fat no. A striped carnation was letting them down a little easier, but it was still a no. It said, I'm sorry, but I can't be with you. I wonder which flower meant, like, you know, are you down? There was something like that out there, I guarantee it. I don't know which one.

Yeah. But there was definitely something. And then the last part, I asked you where you were wearing your nosegay, and you said in the center of your bodice, which meant, I just want to be friends. But if you had worn it over your heart, Chuck, I would have known that you were saying, I love you right back, buddy. Hey, I do love you right back, buddy. Just, you know, not like that.

I understand. I took my shot. Yeah. I guess then Chuck Short Stuff is out? I think so. Stuff you should know is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts to My Heart Radio, visit the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.