From Napoleon’s nickname to cures for royal stomach ulcers, flowers crop up in all sorts of strange places throughout human history. There are many pages with more detailed histories of individual flowers, but this list presents some of the craziest flower facts we could find.

A daisy a day…

The daisy features in numerous old remedies. The flower’s original English name was “day’s eye”, which referred to the way the flower opens and closes with the sun. Medical practitioners at the time drew the seemingly obvious conclusion that this blinking flower could cure eye problems.

King Henry VIII famously ate dishes of daisies to relieve himself from stomach ulcer pain. Perhaps laying off the venison and wine would have worked just as well? It can’t have hurt the obese king though - scientists recently discovered that daisies contain chemicals which lower triglycerides.

Daisies for crazies

A common remedy for insanity from the Middle Ages on was drinking crushed daisies which had been steeped in wine. You drank this potion in small doses for fifteen days…and hopefully were a little happier, at least.

The Natural Rogaine?
Assyrians crushed daisies and mixed them with oil, applying this mixture to the hair in order to turn gray hair dark again.

A Spikier Lightning Rod

Druids believed holly was a symbol of eternal life with magical powers. Holly was thought to protect against lightning strikes, and according to Druid lore, cutting down a holly tree would bring bad luck. No word on what happened if lightning struck a holly tree, however.

Suntan Lotion Before Banana Boat

Queen Anne’s Lace is named after Queen Anne, the wife of King James I of England. Her so-called friends challenged her to create lace as intricate and beautiful as the flower. The root of Queen Anne’s Lace was also known as “wild carrot”, and stimulates pigment production in humans. Natives in Northern Africa chewed it to protect themselves from the sun.

The Tulip Rush of the 1630s

We’ve all heard the stories of the madness that was the California Gold Rush, but a similar insanity erupted around tulips between 1634-1637. Wealthy people started purchasing tulip bulbs imported from Turkey by Venetian merchants. Fashionable French ladies would wear corsages of tulips, and tulip designs began appearing on many fabrics. Growers who started to hydrize the flower found ways of making it more decorative, and the scarce hybrids of the time became a symbol of high status. The bulbs became so valuable that they started functioning as a currency, and the value of tulip bulbs was quoted like stocks and shares.

The tulip frenzy spread from France through Europe, with people abandoning their jobs, homes and families to become tulip growers. One Dutchman paid 36 bushels of wheats, 72 of rice, 4 oxen, 12 sheep, 8 pigs, 2 barrels of wine and 4 of beer, 2 tons of butter, 1000 pounds of cheese, a bed, clothes and a silver cup…for one Vice-Roi bulb.

A baker payed for a bulb with its weight in gold, and then heard that a cobbler possessed the same variety. The baker bought the cobbler’s bulb and crushed it, in order to increase the value of his now-rarer bulb.

Over the course of what came to be known as Tulipmania, about ten million bulbs were represented in the market. In 1637, laws passed that made speculation illegal, and many tulip traders were ruined as prices plummeted.

Mine’s Bigger Than Yours

The world’s largest orchid can grow to 20 metres long. The world’s largest orchid is not featured in the picture above. This one is just pretty.

Better Than Oranges
Rose hips were once used for the prevention of scurvy. Today, when we want vitamin C, we usually turn to the trusty orange, which contains 49 mg per 100 grams of pulp. Rose hips, on the other hand, contain anywhere from 2,200 mg to 6,980 mg of vitamin C per 100 grams of pulp. This stunning concentration of vitamin C may explain why rose water was successfully used to cure all kinds of ailments, such as trembling, constipation, drunkenness, skin and throat infections and insomnia. But I’m willing to bet they’re not half as juicy as oranges.

Throw Me A Flower!

Lifejackets used to be filled with sunflower stems, before the invention of modern fillers.

Corporal Violent…sorry, Violet

Napoleon’s wife, Josephine, wore violets at their wedding. On each anniversary, he presented Josephine with a bouquet of violets. The French Bonapartists, ever the romantics, chose violet as their emblem and nicknamed Napoleon “Corporal Violet”. Before his exile, Napoleon asked to visit Josephine’s tomb. When he died, a locket was found around his neck containing violets he had picked at Josephine’s graveside.

As Old As Roses

Molecular biologists, using DNA to estimate age, are able to trace roses back over 200 million years. Only buttercups beat roses in the age game.

China Rose

According to Confucius, the Emperor of China owned over 600 books about the culture of roses. The Chinese court highly prized the oil of roses extracted from the plants grown in the Emperor’s rose garden. Only nobles and dignitaries of the court were allowed to use the oil, however, and if anyone else was found in possession of even a tiny amount, he was condemned to death. All you have to do now to qualify for rose possession is to win an Olympic medal. Approximately 5500 roses were presented to medalists at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Sources:
http://www.flowers.org.uk/flowers/facts/flower-facts-home.htm

http://www.tethered-passion.com/meanings-of-flowers.html

http://www.flowermonthclub.com/history.htm

http://www.beyondblossoms.com/flower_meanings.php

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/04/daisies-can-def.html