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Of Dragons, Flowers and Songs of Love

© Barbara Hall

Back when I was working at a large nursery, I remember a young boy coming up to me and asking with a slightly surprising English accent whether we had any "Auntie Rhynum." I blinked. As a matter of fact, we all made those rather up and down puzzled faces like Don Martin characters in Mad Magazine.

I asked "Auntie WHAT?" as the search engine in my head went looking for a plant name that might make some sense here. Sure enough I realized that there was one that I had never heard spoken aloud, much less with an English Accent. Antirrhinum. "Ooooooh," I said, "You want a snapdragon!"

This young man looked up at me with raised eyebrows and pronounced:

"Yes, I suppose that's what YOU people call them."

"Yeah, well, watch yourself, kid, they bite!"

Snapdragons have always been one of my favorite wild things, being one of the rare flowers that will indeed open their mouths when their faces are squeezed, just in case you need someplace to practice being an Italian Grandmother.

In honor of Valentine's Day, I want to tell you all The Most Romantic Snapdragon Story Ever Told. — True Story —

Once upon a lot of years ago I was involved in a vaguely rocky and stormy lovership with (of all things) another gardener. During one of our many spats, and I do believe it was in early November, I needed to escort him out of my universe once again and chose to give him my last-born blood red snapdragon as a kind of "punctuation" to show him I meant business (again). I said what I had to, gave him the snapdragon and stormed off. We did not see each other for the rest of the winter. The following spring we found each other again once things began to sprout and the days grew longer and all seemed right once again in the garden. He walked over to me and handed me a small juice glass in which stood my blood red snapdragon with shriveled flowers . . . and roots.

Lovers have been speaking to each other with flowers for centuries. Part of my job as a surfing editor is to spare you snuffling about for The Language of Flowers and coming up with the exact same document over 20 times like I did. So here it is just once. But in all this snuffling I came upon another even more creative take on the whole thing. Scroll down to the second list in this one . And finally I found a list way down the line of the 130 documents on romance+flowers that was REALLY something in that it even contained the

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