When in Rome
Even in winter, the Eternal City blooms.
Sometimes a flower is just a flower. The season, the soil, the surroundings all dictate what will grow where and when and our feeble attempts to infuse meaning where there is none are pointless.
But cyclamen? Cyclamen was everywhere we looked during our January sabbatical in Rome. It was impossible not to read something into the drips of blood-red blooms, especially when my mind is prone to conspiracies and Rome is a city of intrigue potentially filled with characters from a Dan Brown novel and tourists.
Very few flowers are as unsettling as cyclamen. They can mean everything and anything. Death? Yep. Eternal life? Sure. Love? Not just love, but True Love.
The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1896.
It is a flower that says farewell, considered a proper parting gift, especially if you’d like to tack “and don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
It is a flower that promises a beautiful beginning, a lovely - albeit stalkerish - gift to young girls.
Oh, and it’s also good for your libido. So definitely a little creepy, depending on your audience.
Cyclamens are a hot mess in the world of floriography, a mish-mash of symbolisms and intent. But they are also winter wonders in Rome, a climate they were born to as natives of Meditarranean and north Africa.
As hardy as they are in their home, these members of the Primulaceae family* are prima donnas outside of their homeland, stubbornly unwilling to rebloom unless conditions are exactly perfect. The average North American gardener can attest to this fact, but will still blame themselves as they pitch a sad, depleted grocery-store cyclamen in the trash. (Regret and frustration have never been one of the plant’s symbolic meanings but as we update the Victorians take of the Language of Flowers, I STRONGLY suggest they be added.)
But Romans fill their planters with this pretty tuber with abandon, linking them intentionally or not to the Christmas season. As the hotbed of Catholicism, some are familiar with the churchy interpretation of the plant. With flowerhead that droop toward the ground, the blooms are symbolic of Mary’s humility upon learning that she was carrying the Christ child. In this sense, the plants stubborn refusal to bloom in the wrong hands makes it an indictment of personal faith.
So much judgement from a single flower.
* We get into the Primulacae family, commonly called Primroses, in this discussion of fairy repellants. (Link)
Cyclamen are left laying on the table in this lush still life from the studio of Jan Brueghel on display at Amesterdam’s Rijksmuseum.
