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The history of flowers Part 1: Early humans, the life/death cycle and why we flower.

Since we’ve started our farm-to-floral practice, I've been trying to find the time to write out the reasons for our interest in flowers and put into words the true root of why we have decided to take on this project of growing them. For us, it is about a deep interconnectedness of all things and working with flowers as a living medium for this observation.


A photo of our dahlias, bitten by the first fall frost this season. Before the frost melts off and the plants become mush, there is a short time of immense beauty.
A photo of our dahlias, bitten by the first fall frost this season. Before the frost melts off and the plants become mush, there is a short time of immense beauty.

Farming may seem straight forward, but it encompasses endless aspects of life and requires many ways of thinking. There are moments that fire up the linear part of the brain and other times that creative intuition has to take over. It pulls together subject matters and interconnects them through the very work itself.


Agriculture is deeply intertwined with art, through the seasonal cycles, the patterns and elements of the earth, the moon and stars, and the fractal language of the universe. Art is intertwined with every aspect of human life, history, culture, chemistry, medicine, ritual, and the list goes on. The draw that humans have to creative processes is born from our curiosity of the world around us, which can be seen as the root for all human activity. As humans, there is a certain inseparable nature between art/the creative process and our practical use of the world around us for survival purposes and innovations.


Our current culture and existence as human beings today was driven by the intuitive draw towards art. For our farm and creative practice, this is where flowers tie the thread together. Tending to plants and harvesting them to use in an artistic practice of floral adornment is a tradition almost as ancient as human life itself.


This blog post is an exploration of why we flower, a short dive into flower history and early humanity, and the relation to flowers and the life/death/life cycle.

Photo of arctic poppies growing on the Northern Coast of Greenland by Jeff Kerby for National Geographic.
Photo of arctic poppies growing on the Northern Coast of Greenland by Jeff Kerby for National Geographic.

Flowers are so universal to the human experience, they don’t require an explanation or definition. Humans seem to just know flowers. They grow in almost every corner of the world, from plants that thrive in the long summer days of the arctic, to the innovative blooms of the desert. Even snowy Antarctica, a desert by definition, has two species of flowering plants that have been recorded (which have actually begun to flourish in recent years due to global warming).

Photo of a desert lily growing in sand in Southern California by Wilson Davis Ellis. Desert lilies form a deep taproot to help them survive the conditions. In dry years, the plants stay underground and won't flower at all.
Photo of a desert lily growing in sand in Southern California by Wilson Davis Ellis. Desert lilies form a deep taproot to help them survive the conditions. In dry years, the plants stay underground and won't flower at all.

Flowers are angiosperms, which is simply a plant that flowers and produces a seed enclosed in a capsule of sorts. The first angiosperms appeared in the Cretaceous period, with earliest fossils of flowering plants being dated back to 125 million years ago. The evolution of flowering plants gave way to a deeper connection between animals and plants, due to the need for pollination to reproduce. From the beginning, flowers were already deeply interconnected with other living beings in the environment.

Fossil of "Montsechia vidalii", an aquatic angiosperm that is one of the earliest flowering plants found in the fossil record. It is presumed to be around 125 million years old. Photo by paleobotanist David Dilcher.
Fossil of "Montsechia vidalii", an aquatic angiosperm that is one of the earliest flowering plants found in the fossil record. It is presumed to be around 125 million years old. Photo by paleobotanist David Dilcher.
An ancient flower and its pollen preserved in amber resin, dated at 34-38 million years  old. Photo by Carola Radke for Museum für Naturkunde Berlin.
An ancient flower and its pollen preserved in amber resin, dated at 34-38 million years old. Photo by Carola Radke for Museum für Naturkunde Berlin.

Humans have always sought to grasp the liminal through the use of cut flowers. There is an intuitive allure to flowers that has been engrained in humans since the beginning of time. Early archeological evidence has been found of ancient, preagricultural humans using flowers to adorn graves and burial sites for the dead. According to an article by Nadel, Dani, et al., published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, one of the earliest known examples that has been documented was found in the Natufian graves at the burial site of Raqefet Cave in Mt. Carmel, Israel. Impressions of floral grave linings were found there and are said to be 13,700–11,700 years old. Within the graves, scientists were able to identify some of the plants that were placed there. Vibrant violet-colored flowering salvia, or Judean Sage, and other flowers closely related to the figwort and mint families were present at the time of burial. This society was pre-agricultural, meaning the plants were most likely foraged.

On the left is a photograph of skeletal remains from the site at Raqefet Cave and on the right is a depiction of what the burial may have looked like. Image from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
On the left is a photograph of skeletal remains from the site at Raqefet Cave and on the right is a depiction of what the burial may have looked like. Image from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
On the left is a photograph of the flowering plant impressions at the site at Raqefet Cave and on the right is an image of Judean Sage for comparison. Image from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
On the left is a photograph of the flowering plant impressions at the site at Raqefet Cave and on the right is an image of Judean Sage for comparison. Image from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

There is even evidence of pre-humans using flowering plants as ritual adornment for death. A Neanderthal burial site at the Shanidar Cave in Northern Iraq shows evidence of flowers used in burial practices. Pollen was found in the burial site’s soil analysis, which led to the hypothesis that the deceased were laid on top of flowers. Although, there is no way to prove why or how the plant matter may have ended up there. If the Neanderthals were using flowers for ritual purposes, that shows us a lot, not only about human culture and emotional intelligence, but about the ways in which our hominid ancestors and potentially other living beings may also have this affinity towards beauty and ritual.

A depiction of Neanderthals adorning the dead with foraged flowering plants. Image by Karen Carr.
A depiction of Neanderthals adorning the dead with foraged flowering plants. Image by Karen Carr.

Most humans encounter flowers naturally when they are children. Flowers, including herbs and other flowering plants, are most often discovered through our environment and through cultural symbolism. Later, in science class we are taught about their reproductive systems and scientific parts and how their pollination plays a role in a larger system. As we get older we also begin to see how flowers take symbolic presence and show up throughout our lives within cultural contexts. Cultural uses of flowers are so ingrained in society and have been used ritually to mark major life events for thousands of years.


Although blooms clearly have a thread of importance across time and culture, many people in our modern world have come to see them as “pointless”. Besides some blooms having aromatic and medicinal benefits, not all flowers serve a tangible purpose in the way that fruits, grains, vegetables, and other edible & medicinal plants do. Even so, humans have been foraging and cultivating flowers for their spiritual and aesthetic aspects; spreading their seeds, and growing them through the use of agricultural practices for thousands of years in order to be used in everyday life and ritual. Perhaps the disregard of flowers is more of a reflection of our culture’s current drive for the functional and linear, rather than a reflection of what the flowers themselves have to offer.


This relief fragment from Saqqara, Ancient Egypt approx. 2025 BCE. depicts offerings for Merettetiiyet's afterlife. One of the offerings is an open lotus flower which was a symbol of rebirth in Ancient Egypt. You can see her holding the lotus towards her face to smell it. Image courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.
This relief fragment from Saqqara, Ancient Egypt approx. 2025 BCE. depicts offerings for Merettetiiyet's afterlife. One of the offerings is an open lotus flower which was a symbol of rebirth in Ancient Egypt. You can see her holding the lotus towards her face to smell it. Image courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.

At a very surface level, flowers are a clear symbol for the cycle of life. The representation of the cycle from life to death is clearly laid out in the journey of a flower. From the germination of seed, to the unfurling of a seedling, the upwards extension and branching growth of leaves and stem, to the bud of a flower forming, the flower opening, withering away and finally transforming into a seedpod to reproduce before the plant dies. The showy and fleeting blooms are traditionally harvested for cut-flower use before the final stage of withering and seed dispersal. This arch of events symbolically mimics our human lives in big and small ways.


But more than a mere symbol, flowers are a moment right before all is lost. The moment right before the energy of the plant exits its organized system (as one plant being) to that of the greater ecosystem (decay of roots for microbes, the dispersal of seeds for new life, etc.). A flower is an explosion of beauty before death. Flowers have an unashamed ability to exist in that subliminal moment.


In an almost unexpected way flowers showcase the intense beauty of this moment in the natural life/death cycle, that in most other areas of our life, we turn away from. It is often easier to pull away from the moment before death, than to delve into it. Flowers exist in this hard but also beautiful moment and effortlessly invite us in. There is a delicate connection between life and death towards the end of a being's life.


Flowers are overflowing with a beauty that we try to grasp, but know we can’t because of their natural ephemerality. This is what flowers have to teach us; sometimes the meaning in life is to simply just be within the moment of that stage of the life/death cycle. There is beauty in the withering away that is often overlooked and unseen. There is beauty in being in the present moment and knowing we won’t be able to grasp it or hold onto it forever. It is an experience that occurs again and again with the many figurative deaths throughout our lives and the deaths of our loved ones and elders.


Looking curiously towards this moment allows us to see beauty abound. It is a time of slipping between two worlds, heightened access to the spiritual realm and a deep connection to the present. Flowers let us understand what they have to offer in that present moment, in the stage they are at, regardless of the death and rebirth that is to come. 

Flower portrait of a dying Clematis by photographer Joyce Tenneson. Her book Flower Portraits: The Life Cycle of Beauty documents the overlooked part of a flower's life, finding beauty in the decay and gradual decline. Image courtesy of Jstor.
Flower portrait of a dying Clematis by photographer Joyce Tenneson. Her book Flower Portraits: The Life Cycle of Beauty documents the overlooked part of a flower's life, finding beauty in the decay and gradual decline. Image courtesy of Jstor.

A common dislike of flowers is rooted in their very nature, the fact that they are so obviously on a path towards death. I think some of the disdain for flowers has to do with how uncomfortable our culture is with death. As a society, if something is no longer “useful” then it has no space in our busy lives, so certainly something close to death is out of the picture. We have been taught that there is no point if something doesn’t serve us a direct and tangible use. This causes us to miss out on so many of the intangible knowledge all around us. Flowers resemble the patterns of this earth and universe- both in their life cycle patterns and in their physical state, and have something to share with us whether it is tangible or spiritual. The anthropology of flowers shows us this again and again. Across cultures, there are meanings, traditional knowledge of growing, processing, medicine making, and art and adornment. There is an essence of flowers that draws humans toward them in the first place. Across time and geographical regions, humans have always held flowers at a striking level of sacredness.

A collection of the flower of life symbol across cultures. In addition to the use of flowers themselves, their visual patterns have been used as a sacred symbol across cultures. Flowers speak the language of the universe through their cyclical nature as well as their physical structure. Image source unknown.
A collection of the flower of life symbol across cultures. In addition to the use of flowers themselves, their visual patterns have been used as a sacred symbol across cultures. Flowers speak the language of the universe through their cyclical nature as well as their physical structure. Image source unknown.
This 1867 print "The flower-strewn grave" depicts a woman and child laying out flowers for the dead. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress
This 1867 print "The flower-strewn grave" depicts a woman and child laying out flowers for the dead. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress

It is not just in death that flowers have made a presence over human history. Flowers show up to mark all sorts of major life events, including births, rites of passages like first-dates, graduations, birthdays and marriages. This traditional ritual behavior around flowers has a long and varying history in individual cultures, and can be traced back thousands of years spanning societies. Something that has stuck with me over the years is an experience I had when I first started working with flowers. I was sent on a Saturday delivery route, which seemed like a mundane task but left me in awe of the history of flower rituals that humans have had for thousands of years. Within a few hours, I delivered flowers to a new birth, a funeral service for an elder, and a wedding ceremony. The thread between all of these life events was the tradition of flowers. Just as the flowers themselves invite us to be in the present moment, we use them to adorn events in life that bring us into the present moment, where nothing else matters: birth, death, and the times throughout life that pull us closer to each other. Flowers are a medium between humans and the mysteries of the life/death/life cycle of our universe.


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