Cotton! Not just for your clothes...

In The Posy Book, I have included many years of compiled language of flowers dictionaries into the New Language of Flowers section.  I sourced flowers meanings from all over the world including England, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, and Australia.  I also spent copious hours on the computer and still do, researching and obtaining new information to include in my online version of the dictionary, newlanguageofflowers.com.  

During the past 24 years of making beautiful posies, there have been many flowers and plants that I wanted to incorporate into the designs, but there are no meanings for them in the language of flowers.  It wasn't until recent years that I began to give these flowers and plants a meaning for my new and updated dictionary.  Cotton is one of these plants.  For my Holiday Warmth Posy, it lends itself beautifully, as aesthetically it reminds us of fluffy snow-covered hills.  Perfect for a wintry holiday message the posy carries to it's recipients!  In the language of flowers, cotton represents; fortune, give and take, gratitude, receiving of a blessing, cherish, and well-being.  Again, perfect for a holiday posy, where we often reflect on the year's blessings, and/or, accept some hardships we must learn to give and take.  And we also think and try to manifest good blessings for the upcoming year.  I absolutely love using cotton in posies! 

How did I come up with the meanings for cotton though?  Research!  Strangely enough however, I found very little information about what cotton historically represents. There was one site that regarded the symbolism of cotton as fortune, and a blessing.  There again, as I talk about in my book--plants and flowers historically derived their meanings based upon several things, either the plant aesthetics itself, it's growth characteristics, or in cotton's case, it is representative of it's variety of impacts on human life.  In the south, where cotton has been grown commercially for many years, a good field of cotton and the subsequent yield of cotton always meant a good livelihood.  It meant they would have money for the next year.  You've heard the term "walking in high cotton"?  That simply interprets as someone that's well off financially.  A good field of cotton was a blessing, and it is cherished.

Stay tuned for an up and coming New Year Posy that will of course include some fluffy cotton!