Queer Botany – Horticultural Symbolism Within the LGBTQ+ Community (#120)

You may be familiar with the double Venus and double Mars designs, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to symbols representing the LGBTQ+ community. Some of these symbols, such as violets and green carnations, originated as a secret way for the wearers to indicate their sexuality — similar to handkerchief code (which deserves its own episode, but as a quick TLDR: In the '70s, the handkerchief code gained popularity among gay men who were in search of casual sex. The handkerchiefs were placed in your back pocket, essentially, and depending on the colour, symbolized a sexual fetish or a position. There was even a meaning behind which pocket you tucked it in. Codes like this were crucial to the early development of LGBTQ+ communities, but date back even further than the Gay Liberation movement, to the mid- to late-19th century, and are still used in cities across the globe today).

Others, such as the P-shaped pansexual symbol, are intended to be more easily interpreted. Whilst some of these symbols, like violets, have been used for millennia, while others, like the trans feminist symbol, have been in place for less than 20 years. Whatever the origin, these symbols are ways for the LGBTQ+ community to show their pride.

Flowers always hold meaning. Humans use natural motifs to express and relate to one another every day – so much so that inn the nineteenth century, Victorians put so much cultural focus on flowers that the language of flowers and bouquets (otherwise known as floriography) had its own textbooks! And whilst most people know that the red rose is known to be the symbol of romance, and the four-leaf clover is for good luck, there are actually many applications of floral symbols to reference homosexuality, which is what I’m going to be focusing on today! 

Historically LGBTQ+ people have been stigmatised and often referred to as being ‘unnatural’, however, the natural world is rife with queerness (The term ‘queer’ originally meant ‘strange’ or ‘peculiar’ and was used against the LGBTQ community but has been reclaimed by activists as a broad term for sexual and gender minorities). One such example can be found in the variety of plants and their reproductive methods. Nature is in constant flux and is at its best when rich in diversity. Concepts such as science & culture, male & female, human & nature are often contrasted in stark binaries but queerness favours multiplicity and gradients. So oftentimes, in order to safely express queer love, the community subverted floriography for our own purposes.

So let’s start with...

Violets

One of the oldest botanical queer symbols in history is the violet, as its story and importance to the queer community can be traced all the way back to Ancient Greece and the poet, Sappho (c. 600 BCE). From the island of Lesbos, Sappho was renowned for her romantic and erotic poetry, especially those depicting homoerotic desire for women. From her name originates the terms ‘Sapphic’ and ‘Lesbian’, describing female homosexuality.

Sappho composed over 10,000 lines of lyrics, once housed in the Library of Alexandria, but much of her work was lost through natural deterioration and poor preservation. It is believed that preservers actively neglected and destroyed her work. In 1711, a translator censored Sappho’s poem, “Ode to Aphrodite” by changing the subject of her desire to a man. During the Middle Ages, Christian figures condemned Sappho and ordered her remaining poetry to be burned due to misogynistic and homophobic views of her work. Interest in her life and poetry has resurged over the past century. Unfortunately, people have only uncovered about 650 remaining lines of poetry. “The Ode to Aphrodite” is the only complete poem. Sappho appreciated the wonders and beauty of nature. You can read the many botanical references painted throughout her work. In a poem about women wearing garlands, communing in a pasture and other places, Sappho writes:

 “Many crowns of violets, roses and crocuses…together you set before more and many scented wreaths made from blossoms around your soft throat…with pure, sweet oil…you anointed me, and on a soft, gentle bed…you quenched your desire…no holy site…we left uncovered, no grove…”

In these and other fragments, she references roses, violets, crocuses, honey clover, a lotus, and hyacinth specifically. She also references “meadow blooms/spring flowers,” “golden flowers,” “garlands of blooming flowers,” and “purple blooms” generally. She mentions the color purple or violet multiple times, which is perhaps where this color first became associated with the queer community.

Violets as a symbol of sapphic love have also appeared in many modern works. The 1927 Broadway play, “The Captive” by Édouard Bourdet follows two lesbian characters. As a romantic gesture, one sends a bouquet of violets to the other. This play led to such public uproar that protestors and police shut down the final performance in France. Soon after, the violet was associated with lesbianism and referred to as “the Lesbian flower”. Florists in the United States experienced a crash in violet sales during this time, but supporters of the play would wear violets pinned to their lapels.

The symbol of violets continued to resurface throughout the twentieth century, especially in films as one of the subtle symbols of lesbians on screen. For example, in the movie Suddenly Last Summer (and the Tennessee William’s book of which it is based), Katharine Hepburn’s character, Mrs. Violet Venable, is often analysed as a closeted lesbian.

Calla Lillies

As xenophobic movements of the 1930’s drove bold expressions of homoeroticism underground, history saw florals become the primary messengers of secret love once again. Just like with violets on film, calla lilies implied female sexuality in art. Georgia O’Keeffe denied any hidden sexual overtones in her calla lilies paintings; six of which sold for $25,000 in 1928. No one can overlook that Frida Kahlo also painted the motif of calla lilies in many of her works and she openly had relationships with women. However, with Freudian popular psychology at the forefront of non-Victorian culture, these pieces can elicit a strong response. 

Pansies

I’m sure many of us, growing up, have heard someone call someone else a “pansy” in an effort to insult their strength or masculinity. It’s a ridiculous and dated slur that reveals the ignorance of the name-caller (and not just because, botanically speaking, pansies are quite hardy and resilient), and one with a long history in the Western world.

In fact, “daisy,” “buttercup,” and especially “pansy,” as well as the generalized “horticultural lad” were early twentieth century terms for “flamboyant gay men” or any man exhibiting characteristics the name-caller considered unmanly.

However, pansy is the term that stuck—especially for those who dressed flamboyantly. The bold bright colours of the flower may have been what triggered the association, and oddly enough pansies are related to violets in the Viola taxanomic family. As a result, many gay bars throughout history had names such as “The Pansy Club.”

There were periods when these bars were more accepted than others. Whilst in Harlem in 1869, the masquerade balls became popular, the late 19th century restricted gay male activity to the seedy red-light district under the elevated train of the Bowery, with an even less visible lesbian life largely restricted to private salons for upper-class women. 

However, later in the 1920s, prohibition allowed the first emergence of a visible gay and lesbian life. Drag queens like Jean Malin helped popularize gay-friendly bars in major cities, a trend that historian George Chauncey called “the Pansy Craze”, and the underground drag balls experienced a surge of popularity in Los Angeles, New York, and other major cities throughout the 1920s-1930s.

Especially in New York City, drag balls were extravagant and enormous, and drag performers were called “pansy performers” because of their colourful clothing. The “Pansy Craze” helped to kickstart a legacy of gay nightlife, as Prohibition forced all kinds of people to mix—all in search of the same illicit drink and created a culture of at least mild tolerance if not outright “anything goes.” 

These popular clubs were able to exist without pushback for a while, but eventually the end of prohibition (and the police) led to many drag balls and performances being shut down or driven back underground, including a 1939 one in Harlem that ended a 70-year annual tradition. Likewise, the rise of Nazism and Hollywood homophobia, due to the Hays Commission, ultimately shut down Hollywood’s “pansy craze” of queer representation in film, but not before those movies helped to bring queerness to the national consciousness.

Tody, LGBTQ+ activists are working to turn the derogatory meaning of “pansy” around. Among them is artist-activist Paul Harfleet, the founder of the “The Pansy Project”. Harfleet and his collaborators have spent years planting single pansies at the site of transphobic or homophobic abuse, as a way to symbolize hope against discrimination. Harfleet said of pansies: “Not only does the word refer to an effeminate or gay man: The name of the flower originates from the French verb; penser (to think), as the bowing head of the flower was seen to visually echo a person in deep thought.”

Green Carnations

The green carnation has been used a symbol for the LGBTQ+ community, particularly gay men, since the 1890s. In 1892, during the opening night of his comedy Lady Windermere’s Fan, Oscar Wilde instructed a dozen of his friends, as well as an actor from the play itself, to wear green carnations on their lapels. From then on, wearing a green carnation on your lapel was a secret, subtle hint that you were a man who loved other men - scholars have theorized that wearing an “unnatural” green flower may have been a humorist’s way of mocking the idea that love between two men was also seen as unnatural.

There’s some disagreement in scholarly circles as to whether Wilde borrowed the green carnation from the gay scene in Paris (where the claim is often made that the green carnation was fashionable among “inverts”, as gay people were then called), simply imported the fashion to London, or whether he thought of it himself, but either way the carnation soon became an emblem of Wilde and his group, to the point where there was even a parody of Wilde that was published in 1894 called The Green Carnation—and which the horrified author eventually withdrew from publication during Oscar Wildes trial because he felt it had helped bring Oscar down.

Speaking of flowers and literature, also in 1892, Wilde’s lover Lord Alfred Douglas wrote a poem called “Two Loves.” It is reminiscent of Sappho’s poetry, painting an image of a flower-filled utopia (emphasis on flowers added):

I dreamed I stood upon a little hill,
And at my feet there lay a ground, that seemed
Like a waste garden, flowering at its will
With buds and blossoms. There were pools that dreamed
Black and unruffled; there were white lilies
A few, and crocuses, and violets
Purple or pale, snake-like fritillaries
Scarce seen for the rank grass, and through green nets
Blue eyes of shy pervenche winked in the sun.
And there were curious flowers, before unknown,
Flowers that were stained with moonlight, or with shades
Of Nature’s wilful moods; and here a one
That had drunk in the transitory tone
Of one brief moment in a sunset; blades
Of grass that in an hundred springs had been
Slowly but exquisitely nurtured by the stars,
And watered with the scented dew long cupped
In lilies, that for rays of sun had seen
Only God’s glory, for never a sunrise mars
The luminous air of Heaven.

Lavender

Lavender is the plant which has arguably been most associated with the LGBTQ+ community as a whole and the colour purple is often used to represent queerness. With its subtle hue that shifts between light pinkish purples, and grey and blueish tones, Lavender has had, despite its whimsical nature, its own historical significance in representing resistance and power.

While we don’t know whether “lavender” refers to the colour or the herb nowadays within a queer context, but either way the word seems to have been used in this context since the 1920s. It’s even now used at events like Lavender Graduations and the annual Lavender Law Conference of the LGBT Bar Association.

Whilst the accidental invention of purple synthetic dye in the mid-19th century meant that lavender it was a fashionable colour, one that men would wear without anyone batting an eye, towards the end of the 19th century, however, the public began linking lavender with homosexuality. Aestheticism, a European arts movement was founded, eschewing Victorian wholesomeness and the perceived ugliness of the industrial age, in favor of beauty, passion and "art for art's sake."

Newspapers denounced Aesthetes as effeminate, not least one of the prominent leaders of the movement, Oscar Wilde, who frequently reminisced about his "purple hours" spent with rent boys and provoked a moral scandal with the homoerotic themes in "The Picture of Dorian Gray."

The 1930s marked the start of a dark period when lavender was cruelly lexicalized. Gay men in America were taunted for possessing a "dash" or "streak" of lavender, thanks in large part to Abraham Lincoln's biographer Carl Sandburg, who in 1926 described one of the president's early male friendships with Joshua Fry Speed as containing a "streak of lavender, and spots soft as May violets."

Many have interpreted this to mean that Lincoln had a queer side. Whilst many historians disagree, but it’s reasonable to interpret “lavender” as meaning male-male love here, since there are other examples from the 1920s of “lavender” as a slang term to mean this. 

Although the symbolism of the actual flowers faded with time, the pale purple colour would come to represent LGBTQ+ empowerment in later years.

In fact, two main movements that further associated with lavender in the queer world were dubbed The Lavender Scare and the Lavender Menace. During the McCarthy era in the 1950s, there was state-sanctioned discrimination when President Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450, which became part of a national witch-hunt to purge homosexual men and women from the federal government. Dubbed "The Lavender Scare" by historian David K. Johnson, the suffocating climate of fear and suspicion subsequently led to around 5,000 federal agency employees losing their jobs on the basis of their sexuality.

In 1969, the colour came to symbolize empowerment. Lavender sashes and armbands were distributed to a crowd of hundreds in a "gay power" march from Washington Square Park to Stonewall Inn in New York, to commemorate the Stonewall riots that had just taken place a month before.

It was also the year president of the National Organization for Women, Betty Friedan, denounced the lesbian membership she believed would threaten the feminist movement as a "Lavender Menace." Not wanting to tarnish her organization’s reputation, Friedan led NOW to distance itself from lesbians. Rita Mae Brown and other lesbian feminist activists planned an action on May 1, 1970 where they disrupted a prominent women’s event by revealing T-shirts that bore “Lavender Menace” on them, encouraging others to join them. They earned the crowd’s support, and the moment is remembered as a turning point in the movement. At NOW’s next national conference in 1971, the organization reversed its direction and adopted a resolution that lesbian rights were a “legitimate concern of feminism.”

And in the 1970’s, the term “lavender marriage” referred to marriages arranged for convenience or to keep up public appearances of heterosexuality. 

Resistance and resilience in the queer community is an ongoing tale, from times before Sappho to new legacies in the making - after the 2016 presidential election, Gilbert Baker reworked his rainbow flag design to include a lavender stripe so that the flag would have “another colour to represent diversity in the age of Trump.” 

Like the Greek poet, queer folks still face suppression and exclusion for telling their stories. The world of science and botany is no exception. There is much to explore in the intertwined history of plants and people, particularly those people who have been marginalised.