Look! A Rose!

There are few enough cars that pass by my house that you can look into them and see what the drivers are doing.   No one looked at my yard.   Then I started working in it, some days more, some days less.   Last year I planted roses which bloomed in late summer, people started looking at them.   The irises in the new flowerbeds attracted attention in the spring.   Of the wildflowers I planted last fall, just a few poppies and coneflowers are up, people are looking.   In a room filled with artificial flowers, most people will instantly find the one real flower and it will hold their attention.   The question is; why?   What is it that makes us love flowers?   It must be more than simple beauty, or is our perception of beauty directly related to something hardwired into our brains?   In most cases where our behavior is passionate but not easily explained, there are significant ties to survival.

The survival instinct may be the key. Our survival and the plants’.

Our immediate response to flowers is that of unqualified pleasure.   The smile elicited by exposure to flowers is called “The Duchenne Smile”, the real smile, the one that ‘reaches the eyes’.   Several researchers have studied our responses to flowers and now believe that the presence of flowers to our hunter-gatherer forbears marked an area where they would find food in the future or a place that had food-bearing capability.   This fascinating study in Evolutionary Psychology is good reading;

An Environmental Approach to Positive Emotion

There have long been those who wondered why we cultivate and collect flowers, there’s also some evidence that they cultivate and collect us.   The evolution of flowers is dependent upon those who can help them to reproduce.   Plants are static, pollinators are mobile.   It is in their best interest to attract pollinators by being as attractive as possible.   In agricultural communities, the more decorative “weedy” plants were tolerated and seed actively sought and collected for no other purpose than that people liked them.   It’s a distinct possibility that plants, the original biological chemists, use us for survival.

There’s just one thing you have to remember when you sniff that rose.   You still have to tell her that you love her.

Lisa Miller