Side view of a backlit cactus (Echinopsis) blossom
They are love’s last gift—bring ye flowers, pale flowers!
—Felicia Hermans
Side view of a backlit cactus (Echinopsis) blossom
It’s a cold February morning in Orange County, California. My family, and our relatives and friends, gather on a green lawn, in the Garden of Contentment, an older area within the sprawling Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, California, the largest cemetery in the United States. A friend has given the eulogy for my father, Stanley, who has died at age fifty-seven. Our family walks to the open grave hand in hand. My father’s sister carries a bouquet of flowers. One by one, we come forward, adding colorful bouquets atop the metal coffin. Floral wreaths rest next to the gravesite on tall stands. Earlier that morning, several hundred friends, family, and relatives paid their final respects during a funeral service in the flower-filled First Congregational Church of Buena Park. Now, our family and a few others remain graveside among the floral tributes before the casket is lowered.
Such earthen burials in cemeteries are repeated about six thousand times each day in the United States and many more times around the world. Much of the florist industry is based on these services and other floral tributes. With their beauty, flowers comfort us; they make us smile and ease our grief. They help us to heal and recover from losses and emotional wounds. This has always been true. Our ancestors used cut flowers as grave offerings since the time spiritual beliefs first stirred in humans. Archaeological excavations of ancient burial sites in Iraq and Israel, along with tombs of Egyptian pharaohs, such as Tutankhamen, provide us with glimpses into the burial customs of these ancient mourners, and flowers for eternity.
Deep within the Zagros Mountains of northern Iraq is the famed Shanidar Cave. Early humans, Neanderthals, lived here seventy thousand years ago and buried their dead. Excavations in the 1950s by a Columbia University archaeological team unearthed ten Neanderthal skeletons buried along with an assortment of stone tools. At least one individual may have been laid upon a bed of stems of joint pine (Ephedra, shrubs that make no flowers) and also adorned with bouquets of flowers. Pollen from twenty-eight flowering species was identified from the gravesite soils. Pollen-grain concentrations were higher within the grave than in the surrounding areas of Shanidar Cave. This sensational discovery was widely reported in the media and sparked debate. Did the family group of Neanderthals have ritualized burials? Was this the first evidence of floral grave offerings? Or, as has recently been suggested, was it merely interred pollen brought into the cave by generations of gerbil-like rodents hoarding grasses and wildflowers? For now, the story is unclear.
Not as old, but far more scientifically convincing, is a twelve-millennia-old gravesite inside Raqefet Cave on Israel’s Mt. Carmel studied by archaeologists at the University of Haifa. Here, four graves from the Natufian culture (radiocarbon-dated to be 13,700 to 11,700 years old) were lined with flowers at the time of burial. In one grave, an adult male and an adolescent were buried together atop a thick bier of floral offerings. Judaean sage (Salvia judaica), along with other unidentified mints (Lamiaceae) and members of the snapdragon family (Plantaginaceae), were used. Interestingly, Judaean sage has been a ritual plant since ancient times. It has commonly followed Mediterranean peoples from cradle to grave, like rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) and true myrtle (Myrtus communis). Myrtle remains entwined and is used with one Jewish holiday, Sukkoth, the Feast of Tabernacles, still celebrated each autumn.
Archaeologist Dr. Dani Nadel spoke with me about the Raqefet Cave ancient graveyard, explaining that the inner grave surfaces were plastered with mud, capturing imprints of the delicate stems and finest floral impressions at the time of inhumation. Based upon the types of local wildflowers used, these may have been spring burials. Perhaps flowers were offered as grave goods not only for their beauty but also for their intense scents, which would have masked the odors of decomposition. Sages, along with mint stems and leaves, are especially fragrant, used to this day in cooking and burned as incense. A visitor to the Mt. Carmel hillside today walks among Judaean sage, a plant as common there now as it likely was millennia ago. The Natufians were possibly the first people to transition from a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle to permanent settlements with agriculture, animal husbandry, and true graveyards.
From the earliest times, humans have displayed two interrelated behaviors using flowers. We have buried them with our dead, but we have also adorned statues of deities with garlands or left blooms on sacred altars to propitiate the deities. Why is it that something as ephemeral and delicate as a flower took on this new role in the theologies of so many divergent cultures? How could a flower provide comfort for grieving mourners if we evolved from fruit-eating ancestors? Why not use something else? Shouldn’t we be decorating sarcophagi and coffins with fruit, luscious red ripe grapes, apples, or figs?
Perhaps it happened because the blooming of flowers around the world proceeds in a predictable, seasonal pattern. Flowers of the dry season are replaced by flowers of the rainy season in the tropics. In cooler-milder zones, three or four seasons offer a diverse but revolving carousel of buds that open and wilt at appointed times.
Catastrophic destruction by unexpected droughts, wildfires, or floods interrupts annual climate cycles but not forever. Given time, the flowers return. Early humans certainly noticed that when their kin were buried in shallow graves, these sites were later colonized by blooming, opportunistic, short-lived wildflowers ecologists call ruderals. This mode of natural renewal had been noted by most generations of poets, regardless of era. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Laertes offers the then-widespread belief that good flowers spring from the grave of a good person. He hopes that violets will spring from his sister Ophelia’s grave, although her death was a suicide. Thus, Mt. Carmel hides more than one ruined necropolis in plain sight. On warm days in January a trained botanist can show cyclamens, red anemones, winter narcissi, and mandrakes poking out between the tips of the half-buried ossuaries.
On a far grander scale, death rites and religious worship were intertwined in the Egypt of the pharaohs. Flower arrangements were used in festivals and for special occasions. Most popular were the spike-topped papyrus reeds, and flowers of sacred blue and white water lilies. Bouquets were presented to deceased relatives at the time of burial and on various festive occasions and anniversaries at the necropolis and mortuary temples. Beautifully designed fresh-flower arrangements were also worn as broad neck collars (wide necklaces) by participants at Egyptian funerary rites and their associated feasts. Bouquets were brought to burials, and papyrus stems played an integral part since these abundant, aquatic reeds symbolized the resurrection of the deceased. Bouquets and persea (Mimusops laurifolia) branches were found inside King Tutankhamun’s multiroomed royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings (ancient Thebes) when it was first opened by Howard Carter in 1922.
Ancient flower collars and dried-but-once-fresh flowers are found on mummies and draped on statues placed within tombs. When nineteen-year-old pharaoh Tutankhamun was buried in 1323 BC, many floral garlands were placed as offerings on his three nested, gilded coffins. A small wreath of olive leaves, blue water-lily petals, and blue cornflowers (Centaurea) surrounded the symbol of office, the vulture-and-serpent motif above the king’s brow. The floral decorations on Tut’s innermost coffins were especially elaborate. Here, layers of wrapped linen were crisscrossed by four bands of long floral garlands. The plants used in the garlands have been identified as olive leaves, cornflower, willow, lotus (Nelumbo), and celery leaves. A one-foot-wide floral collar encircled the king’s sculpted, solid gold funerary mask. When fresh, before the sarcophagus was sealed, this brilliant floral collar resting on the golden innermost coffin lid must have been a lovely sight. Unlike the previous garlands, this collar contained blue glass beads, lotus petals, more cornflowers, the scarlet berries of deadly nightshade, along with yellow mandrake fruits and the yellow-flowering heads of yellow hawkweeds (Picris).
The royal mummy of Rameses II (1290–1224 BC) had thirteen rows of floral garlands, along with single blue flowers of water lilies under the bands sealing the mummy wrappings. This king, along with others, was found in a “mummy cache,” likely placed there a century later (c. 1087 BC) by Egyptians to avoid the rampant tomb robbing of that time. The garlands of persea leaves and blue and white lotus on the mummy wrappings of Rameses II might have been placed there reverentially during his hasty reburial.
Northwest from Egypt, on islands of the Aegean, the Minoan peoples traded with the Egyptians, who coveted Minoan saffron (Crocus sativus) as a spice and a dye. These people also enjoyed an elaborate vision of death, flowers, and deities, but it seems more cheerful. Amateur botanist and historian Hellmut Baumann has addressed the relicts of this civilization, and its Greek invaders. The Cretans, for example, decorated their sarcophagi with motifs depicting the flowering stems of native dragon arums (Dracunculus vulgaris) and related members of the philodendron family (Araceae). They also painted the glorious white and wonderfully scented sea daffodils (Pancratium maritimum) on these baked clays as it was a favorite of their goddesses. These deities were believed to favor wild lilies, including the white-flowered species we today call the Madonna (Lilium candidum), and the Cretans protected the mauve flowers of the saffron crocus. One sculpted goddess wore a crown made of the fat round fruits of opium poppies.
The Minoan Empire came to a violent end around 1570 BC when volcanic eruptions and tsunamis devastated their islands and left the survivors vulnerable to waves of invasion from the Greek mainland. The invaders brought in a new, male-dominated pantheon. The mighty Minoan goddess became Crete’s nymph under the name of Britomartis or Dictynna. She was a dutiful daughter of Zeus and a virgin.
Classical Greek religion believed in gods who loved flowers. As they were immortals, their worshippers decorated their temples with “immortal” arrangements of everlasting daisies (Helichrysum), as they hold their shiny yellow color and sun shapes when dried. Sacrificial oxen were adorned with flowers of wild carnations (Dianthus) and rose campions (Lychnis). Greek priests and poets insisted that their gods had sacred plants, and some of these bore beautiful flowers. The first Olympian gods invented floral wreaths at the wedding of Zeus and Hera, weaving together wildflowers such as primroses, candytuft (Iberis), leopard’s-bane (Doronicum), and mouse-ears (Cerastium). Pindar (522–443 BC) wrote odes associating Apollo and Aphrodite with sweetly scented violets of the field.
Flowers followed a Greek woman through the most important rituals of her life. Virgins wore garlands of wild, white-flowered species at their weddings, typically incorporating crocuses, white snowflakes (Leucojum), white storax (Styrax), and snowdrops (Galanthus), according to season. The modern fashion of the pure white bride’s bouquet derives from these sweetly scented garlands and wreaths. But the wedding bouquet of classical Greece was more likely to contain garlic and other pungent herbs to drive off jealous wandering spirits! The citizens of ancient Rome picked up many Greek wedding customs but seemed to prefer colorful, scented flowers including violets, wallflowers (Cheiranthus), and stocks (Matthiola). The Greeks also favored roses (sacred to Aphrodite), but the Romans so expanded the wedding fashions that they may have used the flowers of four or five different Rosa species. Wealthier Romans also tried to turn their wedding nuptial chambers into a fertile garden of flowers and greenery.
As a matron, the mature Greek woman celebrated the summer rites (Thesmophoria) sacred to the grain goddess, Demeter. This included sleeping on makeshift beds sprinkled with the blue-purple flowers of the chaste tree (Vitex), to keep them faithful to their husbands and to increase their fertility. These flowers were sacred to Demeter, Hera (goddess of marriage), Aphrodite (goddess of love and fertility), and even Asclepius (god of medicine). At a woman’s death, a purple iris might be planted on her grave, and funerals in ancient Greece were elaborate rituals lasting several days.
At the moment of death, the soul (Psyche, portrayed as a winged deity or butterfly) was believed to leave the body through the mouth as a puff of wind. By law, the decedent’s body was prepared at home (the prothesis), usually by elderly female relatives. The corpse was washed, anointed with fragrant oils, and dressed. Then it was placed on a bed of wooden planks and adorned with a crown of tree branches and flowers. Romans adored their floral crowns but also decorated the funerary couch with many fresh flowers. Once burial was complete, both Greeks and Romans scattered flowers on the grave (violets were popular tributes), and both cultures believed that planting herbs and sweet flowers around the burial site purified the earth. Urns containing the remains of the deceased could also be cleansed using offerings of cut flowers.
Even as the peoples of Crete, Greece, and Italy abandoned their old pantheons less than two thousand years ago, flowers continue to play a living role in the cultures and countries embracing the various branches of Hinduism. Indians still celebrate rites wearing garlands of flowers, and they give them away as gifts. Their use of flowers is associated with sexuality, one of the aphorisms of love, for example, in the Kama Sutra by Vatsyayana. The ancient Indian text is not just about erotic love and sexual positions; it also contains information on the sixty-four arts, including flowers, especially fashioning flower carriages and artificial flowers, the adorning of idols with rice and flowers, decorating couches or beds with flowers, stringing necklaces, making garlands or wreaths, and the simple pleasures of gardening.
In their worship and portrayals of deities, Hindus are infatuated with flowers. The name of the Hindu worship ritual puja is translated as the “flower act.” Among Hindus, the Indian lotus flower (Nelumbo nucifera) is their foremost symbol of beauty, fertility, and prosperity. According to Hinduism, within everyone resides the spirit of the scared lotus flower. The lotus symbolizes purity, divinity, and eternity, widely used in ceremonies, where it denotes life, especially feminine beauty and renewed youth. In the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu text, humans are admonished to be like the lotus, holding high above the water, like the flower itself. In hatha yoga, the familiar lotus sitting position is used by practitioners as a way of striving for a higher level of consciousness.
In Hinduism, the lotus also represents beauty and nonattachment. The aquatic plant produces a large, beautiful, pinkish blossom, but it is rooted fast in the mud of a shallow pond or lake. Its stiff leaves rise above the water’s surface, neither wetted nor muddy. Hindus view this as an admonition for how we should live our lives, without attachment to our surroundings. Several Hindu deities are likened to the lotus blossom. Krishna is described as the Lotus-Eyed One in reference to his supposed divine beauty. Deities including Brahma, Lakshmi, Vishnu, and Saraswati are also associated with the lotus blossom. The “wooing” of Hindu gods is normally done with adorning clothing, jewels, dances and music, perfumes, betel nuts, coconuts, and other foods, but especially with vermilion dusts and many flowers.
During Holi, the festival of colors during the spring, worshippers paint their faces with brilliant vermilion powders. Flowers are everywhere on display for Holi and Diwali (the festival of lights, celebrated in India and Nepal). Colorful floral displays called rangoli are created for indoor or outdoor use by the celebrants. The Diwali holiday marks the victory of good over evil (Lord Rama’s victory over the demon-king Ravana). Villagers commonly paint the faces of sacred cattle with vermilion and drape their necks with long floral garlands, using marigolds, and red-purple makhmali (flowering heads of long-lasting amaranths) in Nepal. In an interesting form of what may be considered cultural diffusion with flowers, Hindus prefer the fat, hybrid heads of marigolds (Tagetes), apparently unaware of their earlier association with bloody human sacrifices performed by Aztec high priests.
In India, yatra are the pilgrimage festivals celebrated at Hindu temples. Idols are carried aloft in a special procession on a palki (sedan chair). These ceremonial platforms are highly decorated, festooned in colorful live flowers including marigolds and makhmali. Cremation is mandatory for most Hindus. In India, after the elaborate cremation ceremonies performed by male family members, the deceased’s ashes are gathered and usually scattered on the waters of the sacred Ganges River (especially at Allahabad), or at sea. Mourners often place floating bowls containing the ash remains and flowers in the river. They also scatter flower petals and whole flowers on the waters as part of this ritual.
Buddhism originated in northern India. Although often considered a spiritual path or way of life, rather than a formal religion, its many followers use and admire flowers in their rituals and daily lives. The lotus is often stated to represent the most exalted state of man and is the symbol of knowledge and the Buddha. Legend has it that wherever the Buddha paced to and fro in meditation, lotus flowers sprang up in his footsteps. In most Buddhist art, the lotus flower symbolizes the Buddha and transcendence to a higher state. The lotus is also thought to represent in Buddhism four human virtues: scent, purity, softness, and beauty.
In contrast, some Hindus and Hindu offshoots, such as Jainism, eschew flowers. Orthodox Brahmans and Jains oppose using flowers because, although no blood is spilled, a “sacrifice” is made by cutting the stem of the plant, which kills the flower. Allowances are often made and flowers are used by these groups in worship. However, the very best flowers, as offerings, are those that fall naturally to the ground so their lives were not taken by picking. India’s Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948), made famous by inspiring nonviolent acts of civil disobedience among his followers, avoided the use of floral garlands. Gandhi preferred garlands made of cotton or necklaces of plain sandalwood beads.
The Hindu use of flowers is most vibrant and lavish on the island of Bali, in the Indonesian archipelago. The ancient Sanskrit word bali means “tribute” or “gift,” especially surrounding temple ceremonies and the use of flowers. Wandering the streets of Ubud, you see minipalettes, three-by-three-inch woven-palm-leaf trays filled with colorful flowers of frangipani (Plumeria; a relative of our milkweeds), ylang-ylang (Cananga odorata; related to custard apples), and Impatiens (the same tropical weeds we grow as summer shade-garden annuals). These offerings are called banten in Balinese. Incense tops the vibrant offerings, adding its wisps of fragrant smoke to appease nature spirits, and the numerous gods and demons of Balinese Hinduism.
These miniature offerings in Bali take on many different forms. They always contain flowers, but may include cookies, cigarettes, rice, or money. The offerings are not always contained in the plaited-palm trays. Often, they are merely small piles of colorful flower petals. The items used in the offerings seem to be less important than the act of creating these tributes. Balinese women spend a large part of each day creating and placing these ritualistic offerings along roadways and paths, often perched where you least expect them. The offerings are everywhere, sitting atop walls, planters, and stair steps. Individual flowers and garlands adorn stone statues, such as those of Ganesha. This beloved elephant-headed god of wisdom and art is often depicted holding—you guessed it—a lotus blossom. In Bali, the sweet floral scent of frangipani and ylang-ylang perfumes the air of courtyards, homes, and temples.
Early every morning, before most tourists have risen from their guesthouse beds, the Balinese are out on the streets. They sweep away the previous day’s now-wilted floral offerings and wash down the streets and gutters. The offerings are daily devotional gifts, repeated acts of faith, cornerstones of their belief system. The slightly darker side of the practices is that the offerings are meant to appease and disperse demon spirits who might be hanging around one’s home or a nearby street corner. These are far more than simple street decorations for foreign tourists, which I’m sure most foreign visitors believe they are.
Many of the country’s religious ceremonies are conducted within Hindu temples. Odalans are temple ceremonies lasting three or more days. During these observances, the temple walls are covered in colorful golden thread fabrics. Offerings of bright fruits, flowers, and rice cakes are carried balanced on women’s heads, then placed around the temples. The Hindu gods are believed to take the essence (sari) from these food offerings, which are later brought home and consumed by the worshipping families.
On Bali, flowers play as important a role in death as they do in life. The dead, inside their coffins, are placed inside large, elaborate, gilded sarcophagi made of papier-mâché. These often take the form of bulls or the demonic Bhoma guardian with a fearsome, openmouthed head, staring down at the onlookers. They are impressive works of art accompanied by flowers. The black and gold sarcophagi are highly decorated with real and paper flowers. Floral garlands (chrysanthemums) adorn the necks of the impressive mythical beasts.
During the funeral ceremonies, everyone wears bright costumes, and village women prepare food offerings to be eaten by the mourners during the festivities. The distinctive ringing tones of gamelan music are an integral part of Balinese culture and their funeral traditions. Finally, the ornate funeral pyres with their garlanded animals are set ablaze with added gasoline for good measure. After the flames have done their work, the family separates the ashes and bones of the deceased from the remaining residue. The cremains are tenderly placed inside folded white and yellow cloths along with flowers and buried twelve days later, after a final purification rite, again augmented with flowers.
When trade brought the lotus to Egypt around 500 BC, it displaced the blue and white water lilies used in worship. Favorite flowers find new religions, and it’s a never-ending circle, with Mexican marigolds and frangipani used extensively by Hindus in India and on Bali. Therefore, it should not surprise us that the goddesses of the Mediterranean basin gave their grandest white flower to Christianity, recognizable to most as the white Madonna lily (Lilium candidum). In the United States, this is the omnipresent potted Easter lily.
In early Christian liturgy, Mary’s tomb was filled with these white lilies after her assumption into heaven. The Madonna lily also figures in Renaissance paintings of the Annunciation. Its white color represents her presumed virginity and immaculate conception. Today, flowers taking on similar Christian symbolism include the lily of the valley, the snowflake, and the snowdrop, once worn by Greek brides. White, the color of purity and innocence, and red, Christ’s sacrificial blood, represented by roses, have been emblems of the Virgin Mary. They were also sacred to Venus and Aphrodite in earlier times.
Ironically, the earliest practices of the Christian church largely avoided ceremonial uses of flowers as they were associated with former but often appropriated pagan rites. These restrictions were modified over time, so now Christian services and funerals seem incomplete without flowers. For Catholic services, floral arrangements are usually placed on shelves, the gradines, behind the main altar. Although white flowers are most often used, even red flowers are allowed, along with ferns and other greenery. Often an attempt is made to match flower colors with those of the clerical vestments. In the Catholic Church flowers are used in moderation during Advent but are often “given up” for Lent. Historically, rosary beads used in Catholic prayers were formed from dried and compressed rose petals instead of the wooden, glass, or plastic ones commonly used. In Europe during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance certain flowers were associated with Christian saints and used during the saint’s day and other celebrations. Saint Valentine was associated with crocuses or violets. The tradition of giving violets on Saint Valentine’s Day was common in the United States, persisting in New York City at least until the early 1960s.
Christianity, though, is both messianic and missionary. As the Spaniards introduced it to our American Southwest and Mesoamerica, the use of flowers in the old religions mixed with the new. Anthropologists studying these hybridized beliefs note that the worshippers often speak of a Flower World, a spiritual place where humans might contact spirits or ancestors through rituals or by ingesting hallucinogenic plants. The belief in a spirit Flower World is common throughout Mexico, other Latin American countries, and the pre-Hispanic southwestern United States. These flower beliefs seem to have been widespread among ancient Amerindians speaking a common language (e.g., Uto-Aztecan). In an earlier chapter we were introduced to Aztec rituals utilizing flowers. Flowers for the Aztecs, especially true marigolds, signified a spiritual-afterlife paradise world, but also universal creation and the blood of human sacrifices. Knowledge of the Flower World was traditionally passed to each succeeding generation in song. We also find exquisite depictions of flowers on Mayan textiles, the pottery of the modern Hopi, and in the ancestral groups of the Mogollon, Hohokam, and Anasazi (ancient Pueblo) cultures of Arizona, New Mexico, and Sonora, Mexico. In their minds, the Huichol people of west-central Mexico “visited” the colorful Flower World in their peyote-cactus pilgrimage ceremonies.
In the northern Mexican villages of the Mayo and Yoeme (Yaqui) tribes, leading up to and during Easter week children throw flowers at dancers dressed as evil spirits, the fariseos and chapayekas, who symbolically attack the Catholic Church. Flowers, real and paper ones, and colorful confetti are used as adornments. Altars, churches, village buildings, and homes are decorated profusely with colorful paper flowers. The Yoeme concept of flowers (sewam) has been treasured in legends and songs for many generations. Today, flowers are associated with the Virgin Mary, and flowers are believed to have miraculously sprung from the spilled blood of Christ at his crucifixion. Prior to their religious conversion, flowers were spiritual blessings, important in the native religious beliefs of the Mayo and Yoeme. I have attended the elaborate Yoeme deer dances of the Pascua Yaqui tribe in my home city of Tucson, Arizona. Flowers are important symbols in these rituals. Masked pascola deer dancers, dressed in white, wear wide belts with jangling deer hooves or brass bullet cartridges. Their ankles are festooned with tenevoim, pebble-filled cocoons of giant silk moths (Rothschildia cincta). Their stomping feet sound like alarmed rattlesnakes sounding their warnings. Atop their heads the dancers wear a large real or paper flower, usually red. Yoeme and Mayo funerals are mixtures of Catholicism and traditional cultural beliefs.
For the Yoeme, their world concept is a mix of five worlds; the desert world, a mystical world, the dream world, the night world, and the flower world. Flowers are also viewed as the souls of departed family or tribal members. Sometimes older Yoeme men may greet one another with the phrase Haisa sewa? (How is the flower?).
These ancient Aztec-speaking groups not only traded goods north and south but also their religious ideas and beliefs. Thus, we have clues that the Flower World concepts traveled north out of Mexico, to Chaco Canyon in the eleventh century, and to the Hopi mesas in Arizona by the 1400s. In the Mimbres Classic period (1000–1130), mortuary rituals, using symbolic flowers, eased the passage of individuals into the spirit world. Caches from archaeological excavations reveal the presence of painted wooden and leather flowers, likely worn by performers, just as modern katsina (kachina) dancers wear flowers, later left as grave goods. Flower worlds are depicted in fifteenth-century murals inside sacred kivas. Hopi, and other Southwestern, pottery show symbolic representations of flowers. According to Hopi traditions, butterflies are “flying flowers” and in various forms are associated with the underworld, with spring and renewal, and with the direction south. There is strong evidence that modern pueblo and ancient Mesoamerican iconographies are intertwined, historically related via trade routes and intercultural exchanges. Flowers, either real or depicted in art, formed a large part of the myths, legends, and daily life of these Southwestern indigenous cultures.
Christian and native flower cultures merge vibrantly but positively during Mexico’s Day of the Dead celebrations. In the final days of October, before the American holiday of All Hallows’ Eve (Halloween), Mexicans prepare for their own traditional holiday for the dead, but in a different way from the commercialized trick-or-treating holiday Americans know. As the days grow shorter and the nights grow colder, villages and towns all over Mexico come alive with renewed energy and anticipation for the coming festivities. On November 1 and 2, Mexicanos come together to celebrate Día de los Muertos, their traditional Day of the Dead celebration. Across the country, families honor the memories of deceased loved ones around family burial plots gaily decorated with real and paper flowers, lively paper streamers, glowing candles, and offerings of the decedents’ favorite foods.
To appreciate the modern Day of the Dead celebrations, we recall Aztec beliefs. Aztecs didn’t fear death, or Mictlantecuhtli, their god of death, as much as they dreaded the uncertainty of their brutally short lives. Mictlantecuhtli would not punish the dead. A dead person’s role in heaven was determined not by how he lived, but by how he died. Exalted warriors were believed to fly around the sun in the form of butterflies and hummingbirds, as were women who died in childbirth. Dead infants fed at the milk-giving tree. Everyone else just faded away to Mictlan, like a quiescent dream on their road toward final death and nonexistence. The ferocious Aztec sun god, Huitzilopochtli, demanded the most precious fluid of all, red human blood, spilled in sacrifice, amid garlands of golden marigolds, to slake his never-ending thirst. The beating hearts and blood of human victims were exchanged for abundant crops. Death paid for life in the Aztec world. An Aztec “war of flowers” ensued, tournaments in which neighboring tribes were forced to compete to the death, adding their bodies to the ever-growing demand for sacrificial victims.
Flowers have always played a crucial and significant role in the Mexican Day of the Dead. On All Hallows’ Eve, the spirits of dead children return home, but must leave by midday on November 1. Bells ring out all afternoon on this day from churches, announcing the arrival of adults, the “faithful dead,” returning to their scattered villages. Candles burn on flower-filled home shrines and altars chock-full of marigolds, other flowers, candy skulls, and family photographs. The sweet fragrance of burning copal incense (from ancient Mayan and Aztec traditions) fills the air inside the homes. Often, trails of scattered marigold petals lead to doorways, meant to show wandering spirits of the dead their way back home. You can also witness many of these same customs on the streets and cemeteries of mountain villages in northern Guatemala. Marigolds are the foremost flower among these ceremonies and are native plants of Mexico. However, in Oaxacan and Cuernavacan markets as elsewhere, celebrants also buy the cloudlike floral sprays of baby’s breath (Gypsophila paniculata), a domesticated plant that grows wild in its native Russian steppes. Mexicans also use the brilliant flamelike heads of cockscomb (Celosia) to decorate their shrines, church altars, and graves. Once a religion includes flowers in its worship or mourning, the original distribution and mythology of an attractive bloom is no barrier to its acceptance among new rites in other distant locations.
Whenever I drive the roadways of Sonora, Mexico, or those in southern Arizona, spots of color vie for my attention. Are they flowers in the desert, even during the winter when all the grasses are withered and brown, when nothing should be blooming? No, these little gardens of grief are roadside memorials, shrines honoring the dead, called descansos in Mexico. They mark places where someone died in an automobile crash. The memorials usually have a white cross, and often a saint’s figure and a votive candle, but invariably flowers, plastic ones, or fresh flowers refreshed on anniversary dates and holidays. Occasionally, I stop out of curiosity to read their names, or to admire the decorative floral arrangements. I’m reminded of the sidewalk and roadside floral tribute gardens that stretched for miles following the September 6, 1997, funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales. Whether permanent roadside shrines or a single flower left in an open jar, they are omnipresent reminders of the immensely powerful social customs and values of flowers as memorial tributes.
A roadside memorial (descanso) in Arizona
In contrast, the use of flowers in contemporary American funerals seems a bit restrained. To understand our relation to flowers and death we need to cross the Atlantic and study our Victorian forebears as they established the funerary customs we still use or prefer to avoid. In particular, before twentieth-century embalming practices took hold in the funeral industry, stately, large wreaths and immense bouquets of flowers composed of strongly fragrant white lilies and hybrids of the so-called Oriental lilies (derived from Lilium speciosum) masked the odors of bodily decomposition. Along with burning candles, flowers served the role of air-fresheners.
English Victorian-era funeral processions were grandiose and expensive social events. A prominent English family planned and arranged for a stylish processional costing twenty to fifty British pounds sterling, equivalent to the purchasing power today of about $5,000 (I chose the year 1850). For most of the Victorian era, a pound sterling might buy $100 worth of goods today. The processions were led by foot attendants, pallbearers with batons, a featherman holding tall ostrich plumes, pages, and mutes who dressed in gowns and carried wands. Stylish carriages transported family members, and relatives followed behind. The glass-sided hearse had elaborate black with silver and gold decorations. It was covered with an ornate canopy of black ostrich feathers and pulled by six black Belgian horses, each with its own black-plumed headdress. The ornate, draped coffin inside was clearly visible, and the interior of the hearse was jammed with a wide variety of flowers. Several hundred mourners might attend such a lavish funeral.
After the services, most of the flowers were returned home and became part of elaborate home-parlor memorial shrines. Queen Victoria sent primroses to the funeral of her favorite prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli. Large floral arrangements surrounded photographs of the deceased, and the room was often decorated with one or more stuffed white doves, holding a red rose in their beaks. The British, during Queen Victoria’s sixty-three-year reign (1837–1901), were the last society to truly celebrate death with great pomp and circumstance, as had the ancient Egyptians. In the Victorian age, people welcomed the dead, continued to bring their dead, in open coffins, into their parlors and homes (the origin of the modern funeral parlor). In death flowers led the way.
Victorians had their own flower superstitions, gleaned from older traditions in British folklore. For example, if the deceased had lived a good and proper life, then colorful flowers would supposedly grow and bloom on his or her grave. If people had lived otherwise and were deemed evil, then weeds would assuredly grow unattended and bloom profusely above them. If anyone noticed a roselike scent in the home, and no roses were nearby, then someone was about to die. A single snowdrop (Galanthus) plant found growing in a garden also foretold a death in the family. It was considered extremely bad luck to mix red and white flowers in a vase, especially inside a hospital, as a death would surely follow. Proper mourning etiquette was essential. Widows grieved for two years and wore solid black clothing with no trim, and bonnets with long, black face veils. No flowers were used. Their veils were shortened during the second year, and white or purple flowers were then permissible as decorative adornments to their plain black bonnets.
Today, Victorian practices have evolved further into an immense, nearly $21 billion US funeral industry, whose customs vary widely depending upon ethnic background, religious beliefs, region of the country, and socioeconomic stratum. Some people will not grow or bring scented narcissus (Narcissus tazetta) into their homes because their fragrance reminds them of embalming fluid. However, a little-known change in the treatment of the dead—the use of formaldehyde and other embalming fluids to prolong “viewing life” (the time available for an open-casket ceremony during a funeral or memorial service)—has occurred. Unknown to most, unless you are a mortician or are employed in a modern funeral home, is another surprising use for floral fragrances: dead bodies are being perfumed like real flowers. The new practice is not altogether unlike those of nineteenth-century America, when home parlors were jammed with large and fragrant floral wreaths, of white lilies and other flowers, to mask death’s telltale scent. Today, the unmistakable nose- and eye-stinging scent of formalin (aqueous formaldehyde) has changed. New, milder-scented embalming fluids are used, and even the Civil War–era formalin has been modified to assuage modern sensibilities. Now, embalmers typically add strong floral-based scents to their embalming fluids. The sweet fragrance of white lilies has been chemically synthesized and is sold to funeral parlors as an additive for their embalming solutions. Flowers have come to our rescue. To paraphrase the famous marketing phrase of a modern chemical-manufacturing giant, perhaps now we also have “better dying through chemistry.”
It’s my impression that flowers now used at funerals are less fragrant than previously. Those pale gladioli, now in vogue, have no scent at all. Is it a coincidence that the beautiful, large, white, durable, and waxy white blooms of the nearly odorless calla lily (Zantedeschia aethiopica) from southern Africa seem perfect for placing in the hands of a corpse during an open-casket memorial? I don’t think so, but it’s perhaps ironic that these blooms belong to the same family of arum lilies the Minoans used to decorate their sarcophagi.
While fresh flowers seem such ever-important elements of modern US funerals, their use dwindles as their costs rise. In the United States today, floral arrangements might comprise roughly 10 to 20 percent of the total cost of a modern funeral averaging $8,000. We want and expect to see flowers during our times of grief. Flowers lift our spirits. Even with the recent “in lieu of flowers” practice where friends and family are asked to make cash donations in the memory of the deceased to a favorite charity, flowers and flower-giving have not gone out of fashion. A significant portion of the $34.3 billion (in 2012) florist-industry revenues are spent on cut flowers, potted plants, and wreaths supplied for funerals, memorial services, and placement on graves. The more than twenty-two thousand funeral homes in the United States stage more than 2 million funerals annually, about six thousand each day.
Returning to that February day of my father’s funeral, I have vivid memories of honey bees alighting to drink nectar from the sprays of white flowers draping his silver-blue casket. It was a chilly Southern California day with a few cumulus clouds. The sixty-degree morning temperature was barely warm enough to get bees out of their hives, up and flying, in their continual quest for flowers. My eyes watched as those softly buzzing bees visited every blossom, drinking their sweet nectar. At the time, I was a twenty-two-year-old graduate-school student. Throughout my career as an entomologist, I’ve studied bees (melittology), along with their biology, and floral interactions, the science of pollination ecology. I don’t believe the bees were any kind of spiritual omen, but seeing them visiting my father’s graveside flowers reminded me of happier boyhood times spent together. The flowers and their bee visitors helped ease my grief on that somber California morning four decades ago.
Now, we leave the rituals of death and dying behind and move to the showiest of them all, flowers (dahlias, roses, lilies, sunflowers, and more) bred for their spectacularly vivid colors and sex appeal. Gardeners enter flower shows hopeful that their prize blooms will win a coveted Best of Show ribbon, along with accolades from their gardening peers. We enter the high-stakes world of technology-dependent, commercial plant breeding—the creation of unnatural blue or brown roses, and black petunias, in the laboratory and field. Gardeners are cautioned that modern flower breeding, especially its newest hybrid creations, may reduce pollinator-attracting floral scents, along with pollen and sweet nectar—essential foods for bees and other pollinating animals. Pollinator gardens may appear bountiful, yet can in reality be unrewarding nutritional deserts. The pomp and circumstance of London’s one and only Chelsea Flower Show is revealed with its phantasmagorical artificial environments, new floral introductions, dream merchants, and fanciful exhibits. Step into the verdant exhibit booths. On with the show.