"It is right that we should love flowers," wrote Vincent van Gogh in a letter to his brother, "For they have been with us since the beginning." Although we might wonder about the precise meaning of "the beginning," we can concur unequivocally with the sentiment.

Flowers are not only our constant companions, always nearby, always in fashion; they are also things we use to communicate, self-express, change ourselves, and influence one another.

Rudbeckias mean "support and encouragement." Photograph by Ellen Vrana.

The Language of Flowers: A Miscellany is a bright, tempting book on the history and meaning of flowers. It's an update of Charlotte de Latour's Le Language des Fleurs, published in 1819 and well-enjoyed during Victorian times when flowers were actively used to communicate inexpressible feelings.

Consider the daffodil, for example, which means "new beginnings."

The lovely golden daffodil is a welcome, heart-lifting sight, as it marks the end of winter and the beginning of a new season. It comes into full flower around Easter when thoughts turn towards the renewal of life and the Resurrection.

The daffodil has grown in Britain in the wild since the sixteenth century, once coloring fields and meadows in great drifts and gradually creeping into cottage gardens. To the Victorians, the daffodil was a flower of the countryside, simple and natural, and had a great deal of folklore associated with it, as well as a host of jolly country names such as 'Butter and Eggs,' a reference to the flower's two-tone bright yellow colouring.

The language of flowers is based on deeply human elements: Basil means hate, and anemone means forsaken. A dahlia signifies dignity.

Daisy means "innocence." Photograph by Ellen Vrana.

The daisy was known in Chaucer's time as "the day's eye" because the flower opens in the morning and closes in the evening. For centuries, this sweet and tender everyday flower has symbolized innocence and lack of worldliness. In the illuminations in the medieval Books of Hours, the daisy stood for contempt for worldly goods and implied that a person could learn something even from the smallest flower in God's creation. Its association with the simplicity of children comes in part from the ancient Celtic belief that when a child dies at birth, an angel throws a daisy down upon the earth to console the bereft parents.

Many traditional meanings in the language of flowers adhere to the flowers' characteristics: seasonality, appearance, and even robustness. Anyone familiar with ivy understands why it means "fidelity": it clings and adheres beyond reason. A large ivy plant on our street is separate from its roots, and still, it climbs the library wall drawing assistance from the polluted London atmosphere.

We love the ivy-green for its lustrous foliage, which wraps itself softly around ancient trees and ruined buildings. Nothing can separate it from the tree it once embraced. The faithful companion of its destiny, it falls when the tree is cut down; death itself does not relax its grasp, and it continues to adorn the dry trunk it once supported.

Fidelity was high on the list of Victorian virtues, and friendship brooches, one of the most popular gifts of the period, usually took the form of a small metal bar entwined with ivy and the inscription 'Nothing can detach me from you.'

Humans have an emotional attachment to flowers that courses through literature, art, and history. Van Gogh loved sunflowers, their brightness unfolding for the sun, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda wrote an ode to a posy of violets, and Denise Levertov gazed in wonder at red tulips.

I am set on my heels by the sight of peonies and the smell of lilacs. Our attachment to flowers could stem from memory, experience, or pure sensory delight. Every spring I smell a lilac I am transported to every other spring I've smelled lilac, until death I hope.

What Language of Flowers speaks to is a human continuum that endures apart from culture and individual lives—a continuum based on senses, language, and memory. The allure of language comes in its breadth. With facile fluidity, we express the cosmos.

American novelist Marilynne Robinson wondered at our continuous ability to make language. We need to expand our understanding of language beyond words and speech to include the language of flowers.

It is so interesting to understand the complexity of a flower's past language for it is so much more than merely what we might imagine it to be. Take lavender, for example:

In summer, lavender is utterly enchanting: a haze of purple shimmering in the heat, bees in a frenzy to partake of its sweet delights before the sun goes down; it is a glorious vision not to be missed. But centuries ago, when it grew only in hot climes, it was the belief in those countries that the asp made lavender its place of abode. For this reason, the plant would be approached with great caution and was assigned the emblem 'mistrust.'

English lavender soothes us with its smell yet means "mistrust." Photograph by Ellen Vrana.

Other flowers have meant exactly what we would imagine they would. The entirety of a rose is love, and almost everyone has imagined as much.

The rose is the fairest and sweetest of the flowers. Nature seems to have exhausted all her skill in the freshness, the fragrance, the delicate colour, and the gracefulness that she has bestowed upon the rose. It embellishes the whole earth, is the interpreter of all our feelings, and mingles with our joys and festivities. No wonder it is an emblem of love, the most important and universal of our passions.

The rose has been the emblem of love since the earliest times - the birth of Venus was accompanied by white roses; the medieval poem The Romance of the Rose guided the courtly lover to the garden of the rose, where he found paradise - the but Victorians indulged in its symbolism and sentiment like no other, with a repertoire broad enough to express love in all its many guises.

Pink rose. The pink variety of this beauty means "grace." Photograph by Ellen Vrana.

Read more on our rich history nurturing these magnificent talismans of humanity in Penelope Lively's Life in the Garden or Gertrude Jekyll's Colour Schemes for the Flower Gardens, and psychoanalyst Sue Stuart-Smith on gardening's gift to our mental health.

Returning to van Gogh, for a second, and his assertion that flowers have been with us from the beginning: I propose that it is precisely this—not just their beauty and scent—that renders flowers so impactful. They are embedded into our earliest memories and thus present the backdrop for the life stories we carry.

By returning to them and keeping them nearby, we can create a space of safety and comfort. Flowers are the most familiar things in the world.