A customer rang the other day and asked for some advice on flower meanings. In particular, she was interested in something to suggest ‘thank you for having us’ and ‘we’re thinking of you’. A quick google search suggested pansy (thinking of you), fern (sincerity), dark pink roses (thankfulness) and basil (good wishes). Browsing through several different pages filled with flower meanings produced some hilarious and often contradictory definitions of what certain flowers symbolised. Many of these definitions have to be relics from Victorian times, when the language of flowers was taken very literally by both senders and receivers of posies and nose-gays.