I'm going to depart from my travel photo theme for the holiday and suggest that you bring that "special" someone in your life a rose. It doesn't have to be peach like the one my beloved gave to me, but it should be one that shows how much you appreciate your one and only. If you've yet to find him or her, then consider family members or a friend.
Now, let's see how flowers came to be given as gifts.
The earliest known flower arrangements date back to ancient Egypt. Egyptians were decorating with flowers as early as 2,500 BCE. They placed cut flowers in vases, and highly stylized arrangements that were used in burials, for processions, and as table decorations. Illustrations of arranged flowers have been found on Egyptian carved stone reliefs and
The Greeks and the Romans also used flowers. The ancient Greeks used flowers and herbs for adornment and decorations included in artwork. They did not often use vases, focusing instead on garlands and wreaths.
During the Renaissance flower design started in Italy and spread throughout Europe. Paintings of impressive floral arrangements in vases were popular. In the paintings, fruit blossoms and leaves were woven into garlands to decorate walls and vaulted ceilings, and petals were piled into baskets or strewn on the floors, streets, or allowed to float down from balconies.
Take Tulips for example, between 1634 and 1637, the enthusiasm for these flowers triggered a frenzy now known as the Tulip Mania. This was a period in the Dutch Golden Age during which contract prices for some bulbs of the recently introduced and fashionable tulip reached extremely high levels and then collapsed in February 1637. Tulip bulbs became so expensive that they were treated as a form of currency, or as futures.
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