botanical illustration. Robert Tyas

In Victorian England, flowers were not merely decorative. They were a language — precise, codified, and capable of conveying emotions that the strict social etiquette of the era made impossible to express directly. Robert Tyas’s The Language of Flowers, or, Floral Emblems of Thoughts, Feelings, and Sentiments, published in London in 1896, was one of the most beautiful documents of this tradition: twelve hand-coloured plates showing bouquets of garden and wild flowers, each combination a message composed as carefully as any letter.