Flowers are the the heart's voice: joy and jealousy, desire and dejection, solitude and sadness, loyalty and love.

The symbolic and legendary meanings of flowers were known to many during Elizabethan times, but it was the Victorians who assigned simple messages to individual flowers. Charles II, in 1714 for the first time introduced to the Swedish Court the Victorian mode of flower language which soon spread throughout Europe.

During the victorian time of strict conformity and protocol, men and women used the beauty and color of flowers to express emotions, wishes and thoughts they dared not speak, and every corsage, bouquet, and garland represented a carefully chosen sentiment. Presentation was also important; for example, a bouquet with a ribbon tied to the left told about the giver, while a ribbon tied to the right signified the receiver. Upside-down bouquets portrayed the exact opposite of the flowers' common meanings: to receive an inverted rose was the ultimate form of rejection.

Flower Language became so important that durch die Blume sprechen (speaking through flowers) became a Western proverb, which meant any flowery or poetic expression hiding a secret message of love.