Why flowers are so important to our lives? 7 amazing facts

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nicle mind

8 min readAug 8, 2015

Titan Arum at one of US botanical Garden

Titan Arum is not a new model from the collection of Titan watches; Arum was making rounds in social media in the recent past, as it was again bloomed after so many years. This is largest flower in the world; It is takes up to 7 years to bloom, The flower is only open for 48 hours and attracts thousands of visitors. The last occurrence was in July 22 this year in Tokyo’s Jindai Botanical Garden.

fact 1: If there no flowers, then no honey bees — means the 7.3 billion go extinct

Flowers are at a critical junction in our food chain — that starting point. For honey bees to produce honey, they consume pollen and nectar from a variety of flowers. Honey bees are attracted to gardens and fields that offer a variety of flowering vegetation. Honey bees are critical pollinators: they pollinate 70 of the around 100 crop species that feed 90% of the world. Which means a world without bees could struggle to sustain the global human population of 7.3 billion.

Morgan Freeman talks about his new venture

Hollywood actor Morgan Free man has taken up this random act of kindness of preserving the honey bees in the united states; He calls himself the bee keeper. He has converted his 124-acre ranch into bee refuge to combat colony collapse crisis.

fact 2: Symbol of happiness — flowers are a very easiest way of changing human mood

Fact 2 — this is my finding, If you do not agree with me on this — please close your eyes and imagine you are entering into room and you see the entire room is decorated with different colors of flowers. Just stay that position and imagine about the all the flowers that you know of. Spent sometime in this room, go to each and every flower and have look at them, smell them, touch them, feel them. Now open your eyes gently.I guarantee that you feel more better now.

fact 3: Like Bangalore, there are many cities named as Garden Cities in the world

Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan contributed towards the beautification of the city by building Lal Bagh Botanical Gardens in 1760. Bangalore’s reputation as the “Garden City of India” began in 1927 with the silver jubilee celebrations of the rule of Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV; Several projects such as the construction of parks, public buildings and hospitals were instituted to improve the city. Bangalore is the third-largest city in India and was voted as “the most live-able” by to a global survey of cities conducted by Mercer. Mercer’s survey results I would attribute to the fact #2, as i can still see many parks in an around Bangalore city.

Sir Ebenezer Howard, a native of London introduced ‘garden city’ concept in London in late 19th century. Taking his concept into action there over 1000 of garden cities built in Europe and in united states. See the full list at the of this story.

flower show in Bangalore is conducted twice in a year — in the week of Independence day and in the week of republic day

fact 4: Lotus does NOT mean it is all about Hinduism and India

Most of the Indians believes that lotus is all about India and Hinduism. I was listening to one of the spiritual speech by Sadhguru, Jaggi Vasudev in which he was trying to pitch on ‘Indians’ built Baalbek temple in Lebanon. With all due respect to Sadhguru, I am not quite sure about the logic used. He says that lotus symbol all over the temple proves that it is built by Indians, only things that I agree with him on the fact that, there is no lotus in deserts of Lebanon;

Lotus was considered a sacred flower by ancient Egyptians and was used in burial rituals. Egyptians viewed it as a symbol of resurrection and eternal life. Geographical closeness of Egypt and Lebanon forces me to believe that it was brought from Egypt not from India.

‘Padmini’ is considered to the perfect women, of the 4 classification given by Vatsayana’s Kamasutra; The name Padmini come from lotus; As per the manuscript, her yoni(vulva) resembles the opening lotus bud and she smells lotus when around.

fact 5: Its a $30 billion industry globally— India is at $230 million growing at a rate of 25%

Global consumption of cut flowers is totaled at a staggering $ 30 billion per year with Europe and North America being the leading markets, where as per National horticulture board of India, the national estimate is over $ 230 million as of 2014.

In 17th Century Holland, Tulip bulbs were more valuable than gold! The flower symbolized immortality, life and love. In 1630’s a kind of frenzy for tulips occurred in Western Europe named “Tulip mania” and tulips became so expensive as to be treated as a form of currency.

Kadupul flower is considered to be most expensive flower in the world estimated to be ‘priceless’. Technically it is a cactus, the Kadupul is found only in Sri Lanka and is without doubt a clear choice for the top of this list. Unbelievably rare, this stunning white flower blossoms at night and survives mere hours, meaning catching even a glimpse of it is next to impossible.

Juliet Rose is second in the list estimated over $ 10 million. On a flower show during the year 2006, the flower’s owner sold it for a huge price after he had grown it for 15 years. Though you get a lot of money in the end but you need to have great patience to grow it.

fact 6: There are over 40 verities of flowers that world eats

Apart from flower banquets, decorations and perfume industry, there is a long list of flowers that are used in various food preparations across the world. These edible all carry lots of medicinal values, other than taste and flavors. Hibiscus — used in famous hibiscus tea; Clover — these are sweet with a hint of licorice; Yellow dill flowers taste much like the herb’s leaves; Who is not aware of Jasmine tea; Lavender- Sweet, spicy, and perfumed, the flowers are a great addition to both savory and sweet dishes;Oregano flowers are a pretty, subtle version of the leaf; All roses are edible, with flavor more pronounced in darker varieties. violets, sunflower, squash, sage, rosemary, hollyhock, fuchsia, fennel, daisy,chicory — the list is longer;

There are few safety tips around eating flowers fresh from a garden — and the top 3 could be — Eat flowers you know to be consumable; Eat flowers you have grown yourself; Eat only the petals, and remove pistils and stamens before eating.

fact 7: Dead people receive more flowers than the living ones

I go with Anne Frank’s statement. Our generation has actually forgot about ‘gratitude’ towards anything that is available to us in the world. The simple ‘thank you’ word also has become thankless. We tend to complain more than, celebrate what we have. I have written about this in my older post about happiness index (click here).

I was reading one article on Booker T Washington, it says as a school boy, he used to write in his book everyday that what all things that made him happy on that particular day. It can even as small as ‘some one smiled at him’; He reads it in the following day to get a spirit of ‘moving on’ and face his challenges and hardships.

Gratitude is one of the prime factors make us happy and if we have gratitude for anybody, express it to celebrate it. There is no medal for keeping it within you. Western style of showing the gratitude is ‘gifting flowers’ or any other things. This probably is the only one thing i would want to copy from west. It is most inexpensive way i guess, as a stem of rose goes as low as Rs.10 on off peak days.

In this new era of online shopping, there are many eCommerce providers offers online flower delivery in Bangalore. Just google ‘florists in bangalore’ to see the long list, one of them (bangaloreblooms) even has a smartphone apps for android and iPhone. Kudos to the app developer used by florist; the iPhone app that i use as pleasing as a flower bouquet.

Thanks and Regards — Anu Sadasivan