About The Project: 

Floriography- The Language of Flowers

The Floral Archive is an online project centred around floriography. Throughout history and across cultures, plants and flowers have long held important roles within society. Plants often have significance and meanings attributed to them. These meanings, however, are often specific to a distinct time period or unique culture and can differ starkly. 

The Floral Archive is dedicated to deciphering the language of flowers by understanding their meanings and symbolism according to the Victorian England standard and how those meanings could be conveyed in today’s colloquial dialect. The purpose of this project is to answer the questions “What does this flower symbolise, and why?” as well as answering “How do we know this is the true meaning?” The Floral Archive is backed by academic research methods primarily focusing on floral dictionaries published from the early 1800s as well as incorporating sources pertaining to folklore, botany, and language. This project will seek to understand not only what flowers symbolise but how these symbolisms came to be.