Kansas Snapshots by Gloria Freeland - May 15, 2026

Flower Language

A week ago, I attended the monthly meeting of our Silver Creek Beneficiary Club at member Melinda's home. Our "theme" for the day was flowers and for roll call, we were to give the name of our favorite flower.

The day before, I had remarked to husband Art that our bright-pink peonies and purple, pink, mauve and yellow irises have been more prolific than in recent years. Then it struck me! During the past four years we've been traveling in Europe in May. Maybe that played a part in why the flowers seem especially vibrant and plentiful this year.

I really do like daffodils, peonies, and irises. Oh, and tulips and lilacs and day lilies and hollyhocks. I'm also partial to sunflowers and other native flowers that brighten our prairies in the late spring and summer. There isn't much I can think of that makes me smile the way a French field filled with poppies does. And my September birth flowers - asters and morning glories - are pretty special too. I thought I had died and gone to heaven the year we visited the Keukenhof gardens in the Netherlands.

So it was indeed a tall order to name just one flower as a favorite. I somewhat playfully answered, "whatever flower is blooming now."

We were to bring a houseplant, tell about it, and exchange it with another member. I took a cutting from a geranium with variegated green-and-yellow leaves that I recently purchased from a local nursery. I chose it because it reminds me of my mother, who loved geraniums and always had some in planters. I also like the scent of its leaves. Others shared cuttings from philodendrons, ivy, lambs' ear, and so on. Some had come from plants that have been in their families for generations.

Mary brought a "surprise flower." It was a pop-up card in the shape of a basket of beautiful blue hydrangeas. I offered to take it home as it will last for a long time on our dining-room hutch!

Joyce, our president, gave each of us a marigold seedling to plant. She told us marigolds symbolize joy, passion, creativity, and the warmth of the sun, although they also hold significance in some cultures in mourning and remembering the dead. They are widely used in festivals such as Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) in Latin America and the Hindu celebration of Diwali. In Christianity, they are called "Mary's Gold," and were historically offered on the Virgin Mary's altar to symbolize devotion.

Before leaving, we took a tour of Melinda's beautifully-landscaped yard with a view of the green Flint Hills in the distance. She had cut some dainty purple columbine, which she offered to me. It's a hardy native that attracts bees, butterflies, and birds.

Flowers have long played a part in our various celebrations throughout the year. May is certainly a month where flowers hold special significance - May Day on May 1, Mother's Day on the second Sunday, and Memorial Day on the last Monday. Can anyone forget John McCrae's "In Flanders Fields the poppies grow?" In 1945, our friend Bärbel was a World War II refugee. She told us how she would pick wildflowers for the American soldiers who would then take them and give her a bar of chocolate.

Catherine Boeckmann of almanac.com, the website version of The Old Farmer's Almanac, wrote in February 2026 that the language of flowers has been recognized for centuries. Shakespeare's works, as well as mythologies, folklore, sonnets, and plays of the ancient Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and Chinese have many references to flower and plant symbolism.

Boeckmann said learning the meanings of flowers became a popular pastime during the 1800s. Nearly all Victorian homes had, along with Bibles, guidebooks for deciphering their "language." For example, during that era, bluebells were associated with kindness, peonies with bashfulness, and tulips with passion.