National Flower Day

The story of how that happened starts with Edgar Wells. A Colombian of English descent, he believed flowers should not be rare, expensive, or saved for special occasions. In 1965 he flew his first carnations from Bogota to Miami and founded a company called Flores Colombianas.

The bet paid off in a way few imagined. Latin America now supplies about 92 percent of US cut-flower imports, with Ecuador close behind Colombia. Wells is remembered as the godfather of the trade.

The habit of reading meaning into flowers is older still. In 1819, a Frenchwoman named Louise Cortambert, writing under the pen name Madame Charlotte de la Tour, published the first dictionary of flower meanings. The practice, called floriography, reached its peak under the Victorians.

National Flower Day itself has none of this paper trail. No founder, proclamation, or campaign for the March 21 observance can be documented. It circulates instead through holiday-listing sites and posts written by flower sellers. The day is undocumented, but the world it points at is very real.