DEAD MEN'S FOOD
LETTUCE Lactuca sativa L. (1753). Period English: lettuce. Period French: laitue f. Period German: Laktuk; Lattich m.; Salat m. L. sativa: Garten-Salat m. (’garden lettuce’). Sentiments: Refroidissement (‘Cooling, chilling’) Cold-hearted Let us forget Coldness
Ah, Lettuce.
Truly, what can one say? There it is, the humble lettuce. The bread of the salad. The leaf of the ground. The only reason I can pretend a fast food chicken wrap is ‘healthy’. The favourite sport of chewing pests in my garden. Not my favourite of the leafs (that would be tea, followed by spinach, I think). But certainly: a leaf.
When we speak of floriography in the modern day, there is a tendency to sell it as a ‘secret code’ delivered through careful sending of bouquets, and for that matter conducted all in flowers. People should generally be forgiven for thinking this - after all, it’s in the name, and many of these handbooks contain instructions for the hand delivery of flowers and how this affects their meaning - but it is largely untrue. I’m happy to be proven wrong about this, but I have yet to come across any work of fiction or documentary writing from the period depicting the practice, as the most condemning evidence. Another reason to think this is untrue is purely that these handbooks vary so wildly, and intentions could easily become confused. Perhaps one could send a bouquet with a book to be referenced by the receiver, but books were not cheap and that seems to be an outside possibility. And the last reason is, quite simply, that it’s not all flowers within.
There are those entries that are just unlikely or unpleasant inclusions for a bouquet - many will make mention of various fungi, toadstools, champignons, truffles and the like, and even the stinking land algae Nostoc, also known as ‘witch’s butter’ and infamous for growing in high-nitrogen environments such as graveyards (although in other traditions, such as in China, it is recognised for its nutritious culinary potential). Then we have entries that would cause harm to one receiving them, such as stinging nettles and poison ivy. Other entries are indeed flowers but would be impossible to integrate into a cut flower industry: wild arums (including those which smell like horse carcasses!), night blooming cacti, spring crocuses, belle de nuit, all flowers that fade after a single day, and sometimes do not even survive that. Last, there are entries that would be physically impossible to include in a bouquet, including giant flowers like Agave americana, with flower spikes up to 8 metres in height, and broad entries like ‘rose bush on a lawn’, all of which make it clear that the intent of floriography is more symbolic - to be integrated into poems, illustrations, decorations - than it is a literal guide to bouquet sending.
The lettuce strikes me as one of these entries. For one thing, it isn’t about lettuce flowers, which are quite lovely on their own, as lazy gardeners who have been given the mercy of the slugs will know.
It is hard to imagine receiving a bouquet with leaves of lettuce in it, but perhaps not harder than what that would signify: cold-heartedness. ‘To hell with you, have a limp shred of lettuce.’ Brutal. But all this is probably because lettuce as an emblem well predates the floriography handbooks of Glossa Hortensia.
Read about why the goddess of love and her slain paramour give this garden favourite a chilly reception in the language of flowers, this week on the Glossa Hortensia Substack and Patreon.
The goddess of love and her slain paramour give this garden favourite a chilly reception in the language of flowers.