Short Stuff: Victorian Flower Language

Summary

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Stuff You Should Know – Short Stuff: Victorian Flower Language

Hosts: Josh & Chuck
Release Date: November 19, 2025

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Overview

In this “Short Stuff” episode, Josh and Chuck explore the secretive and intricate world of floriography — the Victorian language of flowers. Delving into how flowers became coded means of communication, especially for expressions unsaid in polite society, they unpack its intriguing history, complex symbolism, and some memorable quirks of the era’s social life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Origins and Spread of Floriography

• Floriography refers to the coded communication using flowers and was enormous in the Victorian and Regency periods (early 19th to early 20th century).
• The tradition traces back at least to the Ottoman Empire in the 1600s, with a practice called Selam, where members of harems would send messages through flowers and rhymes.
  • Chuck (03:43): "Flowers did the talking for them and this actually spread from the Ottoman Empire to Europe via one single person... Lady Mary Wortley."
• Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, wife of the British ambassador to Turkey, is credited with bringing knowledge of Selam to Britain via her letters (04:18).

The Complexity of Floral Messaging

• Floriography wasn’t just about which flower you sent — even how you presented a bouquet, its orientation, and ribbon placement had meaning.

  • Josh (02:12): "It goes deep. I mean, it is literally a code...all that stuff means something."
  • Chuck (13:19): "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."

• Not only the species, but the color, condition (fresh, withered, dried), and arrangement contributed nuanced signals.

• Example:

  • Yellow carnation/rose – rejection or disappointment
  • Yellow lily – joy, walking on air
  • Red rose – love
  • White rose – purity, unless withered (then, "you made no impression" or "your beauty is fleeting")
  • Dried rose – "I would rather die than give in to your advances" (10:37-11:20)

• Herbs and non-flower plants added yet more layers:

  • Rosemary = remembrance
  • Mint = clarity
  • Moss = charity/maternal love
  • Violet = modesty
  • (09:55): "If you put all those together in a little tussy 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."

Presentation & Reception Rules

• The bouquet’s orientation (upside down = opposite meaning) could subvert the whole message intended (13:19).
• Even how and where flowers were worn, as well as which hand was used to accept them, mattered:
  • Bouquet near center of bodice = friendship only
  • Over the heart = declaration of love
  • Accept with right hand = yes, left = no; hold bouquet upside down = rejection
  • (15:06) Josh: "If you held the bouquet upside down after getting it, that's rejection."

Literature & Pop Culture Connections

• Jane Austen, the Brontës, and other classic authors wove floriography symbolism into their writing; 19th-century readers would pick up cues most modern audiences miss (05:49-06:13).
  • Chuck (06:25): Brings up Pride and Prejudice and jokes about an exaggerated repetition of "red."

The Confusion of Codes

• The language was not always universally understood — there were nearly 100 different floriography guides in use just in the US between 1827–1923 (13:10).
  • Chuck (12:59): "You were just hoping that you guys were working from the same book."
• Multiple flowers had multiple, sometimes contradictory meanings, making context king (12:24).

Negative & Rejection Messages

• Some flowers carried direct insults or challenges:
  • Marigolds = jealousy
  • Lavender or Orange Lily = distrust or "I hate you"
  • Snapdragons = "I feel deceived"
  • Tansy = war (14:15-14:41)
• Returning or accepting flowers also broadcast answers:
  • Solid carnation = yes
  • Yellow carnation = no
  • Striped carnation = "I'm sorry but I can't be with you" (15:39)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Josh (02:12): "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 ribbon's tied. Like all that stuff means something."

• Chuck (09:55): “If you put all those together in a little tussy 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.'”

• Josh (13:08): “Yeah. I mean, that's huge."

• Josh (16:32): "Hey, I do love you right back, buddy. Just, you know, not like that."

• Chuck (14:15): “Jealousy with marigolds...orange lily said ‘I hate you’...declare war with a flower called a tansy.”

• Favorite Victorian word:

  • "Nosegay" or "tussy mussy" — a small, tightly-bound bouquet worn like a corsage or boutonniere (09:03).

• Joking about pun overload:

  • "Botany was a growing field." – Josh (04:50)
  • "My pun sensor is covered with dirt." – Chuck (04:54)

Literary Parody

• Chuck (06:25): "I found a quote from Pride and Prejudice from Jane Austen....The narrator describes, she gave a red rose to tell him that she loved him. Red, rose, red, red, red, red, red, rose, rose..."

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:43] Introduction to floriography and its rise in Victorian/Regency times
• [03:15] History: Ottoman Empire’s Selam practice and spread to Europe
• [09:03] Roles of nosegays/tussie-mussies and explanations of mixed-flower symbolism
• [10:09]–[12:58] Deep dive into specific flower/color/condition meanings
• [13:19] Confusion over meanings and nearly 100 competing guides
• [13:55]–[14:53] Ribbon tying, left/right hand symbolism, and negative messages
• [15:06]–[16:32] Acceptance/rejection protocols and returning bouquets
• [16:32] Wearing location and declaration of love vs. friendship

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Tone & Style

True to “Stuff You Should Know” tradition, the episode is breezy, light-hearted, and full of good-natured banter as Josh and Chuck share both the factual details and the comical confusion that surrounded Victorian flower codes. Classic SYSK humor intertwines with genuinely interesting social history and little-known trivia.

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Final Takeaway

Floriography was a captivating mix of art, romance, and social maneuvering — but also a recipe for major miscommunication unless everyone was in sync! Josh and Chuck make the fascinating (and sometimes goofy) intricacies of “saying it with flowers” as clear as possible...while agreeing we're probably all lucky to just say how we feel these days.

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Transcript

[Josh]

This is an I Heart Podcast.

[Chuck]

Living with a rare autoimmune condition comes with challenges but also incredible strength. Especially for those living with conditions like myasthenia gravis or mg, and chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, otherwise known as cidp, finding empowerment in the community is critical. Untold Stories Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition. A Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenics and explores people discovering strength in the most unexpected places. Listen to Untold Stories on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees. Just ask the Capital One bank guy. It's pretty much all he talks about in a good way. He'd also tell you that this podcast is his favorite podcast too. Thanks, Capital One Bank Guy. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capital1.com bank capital1na member FDIC. Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. And that's all that needs mentioning today, because it's just us. So this is Short Stuff.

[Josh]

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 the ribbon to the left.

[Chuck]

Well, may I ask, where on your chest are you wearing it?

[Josh]

Near my bodice.

[Chuck]

In the center or right?

[Josh]

In the center, baby.

[Chuck]

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. It's kind of.

[Josh]

Yeah, I'd have to get out a code decoder book or whatever.

[Chuck]

Well, they had those. Chuck, what we're talking about is floriography, and there were a lot of floriography books because it turns out floriography 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.

[Josh]

That's right, unspoken. Because at the time in the UK and parts of the US obviously in Europe, in certain high societies mainly, you could not speak these things aloud. A lot of times 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 ribbon's tied. Like all that stuff means something.

[Chuck]

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 Thirz D. Just the D flower, meaning and historical holly all helped with this. So thanks to all of you.

[Josh]

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.

[Chuck]

Yeah. Which made sense because a lot of them couldn't read or write. So flowers did the talking 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 Wortley. 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 Selim. How did you say it?

[Josh]

I said Selim or Selam. I'm not sure if it's a long or shorty.

[Chuck]

Well, the flower code that the harem 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.

[Josh]

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.

[Chuck]

The code stems back.

[Josh]

Yeah, that was one.

[Chuck]

That's the only one I can think of.

[Josh]

Well, no, here's the other one. Botany was a growing field.

[Chuck]

How did I miss that? My pun sensor is covered with dirt.

[Josh]

Well, no, that's good. You want to pack some mud on that thing.

[Chuck]

I know, but I don't like walking past stuff. I like to take part, be involved in the mix.

[Josh]

So botany was a growing field and floriography was, like I said, among certain classes, mainly upper class women, because it wasn't 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 like. A lot of Gen X women are obsessed with Jane Austen stuff and Sense and Sensibility and all those series and movies and books. And I wondered if she knew about this or if they in those. Cause I've never watched any of them. If they kind of pointed stuff out like, oh, he sent the flowers this way, and that means this.

[Chuck]

But that's. I mean, that's. The Bronny sisters and Jane Austen used a lot of floriography to help kind of develop their characters, which I guess so.

[Josh]

I guess they did.

[Chuck]

Yeah, they definitely did. And the readers at the time probably would have picked up on this. But floriography, it's become so arcane and obscure that modern readers would not pick up on it. But if you learn about floriography and you start reading Jane Austen, apparently it'll show up.

[Josh]

Oh, well, no, that's what I was wondering if in the books they said, like, oh, well, he sent an upside down thing, which means blah, blah, blah.

[Chuck]

Yes. Yeah, they would do that. I found a quote from Pride and Prejudice from Jane Austen.

[Josh]

Ooh, can you read it in character?

[Chuck]

Well, it's the narrator, so sure, I guess I can, because the narrator sounds exactly like me.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Chuck]

But Elizabeth Bennet 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, rose, rose, rose, red, red rose, red, rose, red, rose, red, 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.

[Josh]

That's so hot.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

All right, I need to go cool down. Should we take a break?

[Chuck]

Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

[Josh]

All right, we'll come back and tell you about a lot of this, what these coded flowers mean right after this.

[Chuck]

If you want to know. Then you're in luck. Just listen up to Josh and Chuck stuff. You should know.

[Josh]

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[Chuck]

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[Josh]

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[Narrator/Announcer]

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[Chuck]

Stuff you should know. Stuff you should know. So Chuck, you mentioned that I gave you a nosegay. Another great word for a nosegay is a tessie Mussy and floriography in the Victorian age started to get popular at the same time that tessie musses 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 boutonniere or a corsage. They were made of flowers and herbs. So not just flowers, but herbs had their own meanings too. So. 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 in a little tussy muscy 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.

[Josh]

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.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

Obviously the red rose is going to mean I love you. A white rose is purity. A yellow rose is loss of love. And a crimson rose is for mourning with m O u r. Right.

[Chuck]

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 made mention, I think, of a withered rose in the tussie mussy 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 can I get a read on this? How much was in the beholder's eye?

[Josh]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, translation is important and we'll get to that here in a sec. But a thornless rose means you've fallen in love at first sight. A thornless crimson rose means you're mourning. Cause remember, crimson rose was mourning, but you're mourning an unrequited love at first sight. And also the context really matters. You obviously kind of know what's going on between you when you're getting these or you're seeking clarity. But 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 gotta kind of have a read on the general air of the relationship.

[Chuck]

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 floriography books. And essentially a lot of them just assigned different meanings to different flowers.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Chuck]

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.

[Josh]

Yeah. I mean, that's huge.

[Chuck]

I think there were 98 different guides just in the United States alone that were circulating from 1827 to 1923.

[Josh]

Not helpful at all. And then 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 mom is looking on and sees these flowers. But it would seem like Mum would know about Opposite Day two. 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.

[Chuck]

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.

[Josh]

A lot of trouble to go through.

[Chuck]

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 tansy, which I hadn't heard of before, but it's like a bunch of, like, small yellow flowers together on, like, a single stalk.

[Josh]

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.

[Chuck]

Yeah. I just. I didn't know that that flower existed, but by goodness, it does.

[Josh]

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.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

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.

[Chuck]

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.

[Josh]

Is it opposite day?

[Chuck]

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.

[Josh]

I wonder which flower meant, like, you know, are you down?

[Chuck]

There was something like that out there, I guarantee it. I don't know which one, 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.

[Josh]

Hey, I do love you right back, buddy. Just, you know, not like that.

[Chuck]

I understand. I took my shot. Yeah, I guess. Then, Chuck Strange Short stuff is out.

[Josh]

I think so.

[Narrator/Announcer]

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