Sweet Peas are April’s flower & symbolize delicate or blissful pleasure. Though native to the Aegean Islands, it was a Scottish nurseryman who crossbred the Sweet Pea into the fragrant, butterfly-shaped blossoms we know today. Soon after, it was so popular that no Victorian dinner party or wedding was considered complete without an abundance of Sweet Pea arrangements! In France, a superstition even developed around the flower; Sweet Peas were believed to be good luck for brides because of their ability to make everyone around her tell the truth (I’m not sure that’s what brides need on their wedding day. . but apparently the French thought so). This climbing annual is now available in every color except yellow, despite ongoing efforts by horticulturalists to breed this elusive color. 

“Floriography”: the language of flowers

Thousands of years of folklore, mythology & religious tradition have contributed to the meanings we ascribe to flowers today. Floriography peaked in popularity during the Victorian era when, armed with floral dictionaries, gentlemen would send cryptic messages to ladies with specific nosegays or tussie mussies called “talking bouquets”. 

Still today we have a tradition of birth month flowers, the meanings of which are rooted in floriography. Similar to zodiac signs or birthstones, it is believed you inherit the characteristics of the flower assigned to your birth month.