The Art of Floriography and the Month of May

The month of May

Floriography is the art of studying flowers through symbolism and each month of the year, has 1 and in some cases 2 flowers or plants.

The month of May contains a flower and a shrub

The Lily of the Valley is the birth flower of May. The flower symbolizes humility, purity, and the return of joy and happiness. Maybe re-affirming vows by the parents and symbolic of keeping the newborn child, virtuous and with the purity of childhood, extending through humility to be a child to be proud of.

The month of May also contains the hawthorn as a shrub, which is supposed to bring good luck to the one who finds them. IE the other person, who joins them in matrimony.    

Floriography is the art of studying flowers, which includes various meanings including symbolism, meaning, and sometimes the scent, and has been practiced and observed for certainly a few thousand years. Floriography is cultural and global. There must be millions of different flowers but only one or in some cases two meanings are recognized for the month of birth. These have emanated from legends and myths, which albeit started thousands of years ago, became prevalent in the Victorian era when flowers were passed not only for their beauty or scent but the underlying meaning which left little ambiguity deriving from their meaning and symbolism from ancient myths and legends. Even before the Victorian times, Shakespeare appeared to become involved in the meaning of the flower, and in some cases, these symbolisms have been kept in the UK and perhaps drifted into other cultures or arrived from other cultures. There appear to be no hard and fast rules and perhaps limiting the meaning to two flowers or shrubs, became an unwritten rule, but I am sure, if you dig deep enough, there will be many flowers associated with the birth, but only a few flowers or shrubs shone above the rest.