Violet :

When Napoleon married Josephine, she wore violets, and on each anniversary Josephine received a bouquet of violets. Following Napoleon’s lead, the French Bonapartists chose the violet as their emblem, and nicknamed Napoleon "Corporal Violet". In 1814, Napoleon asked to visit Josephine's tomb before being exiled to the Island of St. Helena. When he died, he wore a locket around his neck that contained violets he had picked from Josephine’s gravesite.
Common sayings include: Dream of violets and advance in life. Wear a garland of violets to prevent dizziness. Violets are considered a good luck gift, but when violets bloom in autumn, epidemics will follow within the year.

Tulip:

Over a thousand years ago, Tulips grew wild in Persia, and near Kabul the Great Mogul Baber counted thirty-three different species. The word tulip is thought to be a corruption of the Turkish word for turbans. Persian poets sang its praises, and their artists drew and painted it so often, that all of Europe considered the tulip to be the symbol of the Ottoman Empire.
There are people in the world who eat some varieties tulip bulbs, and Japan makes a flour from them. The Dutch have eaten tulip bulbs when no other food was available.
Wealthy people began to purchase tulip bulbs that were brought back from Turkey by Venetian merchants. In 1610, fashionable French ladies wore corsages of tulips, and many fabrics were decorated with tulip designs. In the seventeenth century, a small bed of tulips was valued at 15,000-20,000 francs. The bulbs became a currency, and their value was quoted like stocks and shares.
Tulipmania flourished between 1634-1637… just like the California Gold Rush, people abandoned jobs, businesses, wives, homes and lovers to become tulip growers. The frenzy spread from France, through Europe to the Low Countries.
It is recorded that a Dutchman paid thirty-six bushels of wheat, seventy-two of rice, four oxen, twelve sheep, eight pigs, two barrels of wine and four of beer, two tons of butter, a thousands pounds of cheese, a bed, clothes, and a silver cup… for one Vice-Roi bulb! Hopefully he didn’t eat it.
The crazed population was obsessed beyond reason. Records show one buyer paying twelve acres of land, another buyer paying with his new carriage and twelve horses. The best story… after paying for a bulb with its weight in gold, the new owner heard that a cobbler possessed the same variety. He bought the cobbler’s bulb and crushed it, to increase the value of his first bulb.
The Dutch shipped hundreds of thousands of tulip bulbs to Ottawa, Canada, after World War II to show their gratitude to Canadian soldiers for freeing Holland from the German occupation, and for welcoming Queen Maria to reside in Ottawa while the war raged on.
Aztecs used Dahlias as a treatment for epilepsy
The wealthy speculated on tulip shares. [The word bourse is derived from the mania… speculators held their meetings at the house of the noble family, Van Bourse.] Most of the bulbs were grown in Flanders by monks. Bulbs were traded like stock using paper representation of ownership. About ten million bulbs were represented in the market. In 1637, speculation became illegal, many people, especially in Holland, were ruined as prices fell.
An eighteenth century manuscript notes that the Sheik Mohammed Lalizare, official tulip grower of Ahmed(1703-1730) counted 1,323 varieties. Tulips are still popular and there are many exotic varieties that we enjoy in our gardens.

Sunflower:

These flowers always turn towards the sun. They originated in Central and South America, and were grown for their usefulness, not their beauty. In 1532 Francisco Pizarro reported seeing the natives of the Inca Empire in Peru worshipping a giant sunflower. Incan priestesses wore large sunflower disks made of gold on their garments.
Sunflowers represented different meanings in many cultures. In China they symbolized longevity. In the Andes Mountains, golden images of sunflowers were found in temples. And North America Indians in the prairies placed bowls of sunflower seeds on the graves of their dead.

Queen Anne's Lace :

Queen Anne's Lace was named for Queen Anne, wife of King James I of England. The Queen's friends challenged her to create lace as beautiful as the flower.
The root of Queen Anne's Lace, also called "wild carrot," stimulates pigment production in human beings. North African natives chewed it to protect themselves from the sun.

Poinsettia:

Dr. Joel Roberts-Poinsett, the US Ambassador to Mexico, brought the first poinsettia to the United States in 1928. Poinsettias are known to grow as high as sixteen feet In Mexico. The scarlet color of the original Poinsettias is produced by its bracts… the leaf-like sections that grow before the flower appears.
Because Mexican legends say its bracts resemble the flower of Bethlehem, Poinsettias have the honor of decorating churches at Christmas time. Today, this flower is known worldwide as "the Christmas flower," and you can find shades of cream, pink and scarlet poinsettias adorning homes everywhere.
The Poinsettia is a member of the euphobia, or spurge family. The name originates from the Old French espurg. This plant was used during the Medieval times as a purgative to rid the body of black bile and melancholy.

Orchid:

Orchid originates from Greece, where orchis, means testicle. Some orchids are called ladies' fingers, ladies' tresses, or long purples. Greek women thought that if the father of their unborn child ate large, new tubers, the baby would be a boy. If the mother ate small tubers, they would give birth to a baby girl.
The most famous orchid, the vanilla orchid, was said to give strength to the Aztecs, who drank vanilla mixed with chocolate.
During the 19th Century, Orchids were widely collected. There are nearly 25,000 varieties. It’s reproductive behavior has fascinated botanists for years… to germinate, an orchid's seeds need to be penetrated by fungus threads.

Rose:

Molecular biologists, who use DNA molecules to estimate age, can trace roses back some 200 million years! The legends take root…. Cloris, goddess of flowers, crowned the rose as queen of the flowers. Aphrodite presented a rose to her son Eros, god of love. The rose became a symbol of love and desire.
Eros gave the rose to Harpocrates, the god of silence, to induce him not to gossip about his mother's amorous indiscretions. Thus the rose also became the emblem of silence and secrecy. In the middle ages a rose was suspended from the ceiling of a council chamber, pledging all present to secrecy, or sub Rosa, "under the rose".
The first cultivated roses appeared in Asian gardens more than 5,000 years ago. In ancient Mesopotamia, Sargon I, King of the Akkadians (2684-2630 B.C.) brought "vines, figs and rose trees" back from a military expedition beyond the River Tigris
Confucius wrote that during his life (551-479 B.C.), the Emperor of China owned over 600 books about the culture of Roses. The Chinese extracted oil of roses from the plants grown in the Emperor's garden. The oil was only used by nobles and dignitaries of the court. If a commoner were found in possession of even the smallest amount, he was condemned to death!
Roses were introduced to Rome by the Greeks. During feasts young men and women in Athens adorned a crown of roses and danced naked around the temple of Hymen to symbolize the innocence of the Golden Age.