Flowers
In some countries, certain flowers (such as chrysanthemums) are given only at funerals. In France, red roses are given when someone is in love. In Finland, the same applies except that school leavers are often given red roses on passing their matriculation examination (abitur). Yellow flowers are inappropriate at weddings in Ukraine and Russia as they are viewed as a sign that the bride or groom are unfaithful to one another. In Victorian Britain, an elaborate system of language of flowers developed.
Read more about this topic: Etiquette In Europe
Famous quotes containing the word flowers:
“Death quarrels, and shakes the tree,
And fears are flowers, and flowers are generation,
And the founding, foundering, beast-instructed mansion
Of love called into being by this same death
Hangs everywhere its light.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the lovliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head through the doorway.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“But oh, not the hills of Habersham,
And oh, not the valleys of Hall
Avail: I am fain for to water the plain.
Downward, the voices of Duty call—
Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main,
The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn,
And a myriad flowers mortally yearn,
And the lordly main from beyond the plain
Calls o’er the hills of Habersham,
Calls through the valleys of Hall.”
—Sidney Lanier (1842–1881)