- Meanings of Flowers
In Victorian times, certain flowers had specific meanings because the flower selection was limited and people used more symbols and gestures to communicate than words. But today, with so many flower choices, there are no rules - it's the sentiment that gives the gift its meaning. Your florist can help you send the right message. Many people assign their own personal meanings - a flower or color that might remind them of a special event or moment in their lives. For those interested in the historic meanings of flowers, the Society of American Florists has compiled this list from a variety of different sources: Meanings of Flowers
Alstroemeria aspiring
Amaryllis dramatic
Anemone fragile
Apple Blossom promis
Aster contentment
Azalea abundance
Baby's Breath festivity
Bachelor Button anticipation
Begonia deep thoughts
Black-Eyed Susan encouragement
Camellia graciousness
Carnation
pink gratitude
red flashy
striped refusal
white remembrance
yellow cheerful
Chrysanthemum
bronze excitement
white truth
red sharing
yellow secret admirer
Cosmos peaceful
Crocus foresight
Daffodil chivalry
Delphinium boldness
Daisy innocence
Freesia spirited
Forget-Me-Not remember me forever
Gardenia joy
Geranium comfort
Why Are Flowers Important to the Earth?
Flowers play an integral role in the movement of the seasons, providing primary-produced sugars for insects, habitat for microorganisms, and seeds for propagation of plant species. A flower is the sexually reproducing organ of a plant, whereby genetics are intermixed and evolution can occur. All higher life forms, such as animals and humans, could not exist without flowers and the primary producers which first fix the sunlight into edible forms.
Flower parts and pollination
Flowers consist of brightly colored petals to attract insects, the vectors of their pollen. Within the petals are the sexual organs, the pistil and the stamens. As an insect approaches the center of the flower to drink of the sugars (nectar) produced there, pollen from the stamens typically adhere to their bodies. At the same time, pollen from other plants of the same species may get transferred from the insect to the pistil of the plant, and the pollen grain may then fertilize the flower.
Fertilization
After a pollen grain has been transferred from one plant to the pistil of another, of the same species, the pollen grain grows a pollen tube into the ovary beneath the pistil. Here the floral genetics are combined via the coupling of gametes, and seeds are born. Most plant species cannot self-pollinate, as this lessens diversity, and must be pollinated by another individual of the same species for fertilization to occur.
Food 
Flowers are primary producers -- they manufacture simple sugars from photosynthesis. These sugars feed a whole variety of insects, from ants to butterflies, bees to beetles. Many insects are specialized to specific flowers, in a mutualism or obligatory symbiosis. Orchids, especially, have a very specific and integrated life-cycle with certain bees and wasps, as do certain types of fruit, such as the fig. In turn, these insects provide food for birds and secondary consumers. Flowers are as important to the earth as grasses and all plants -- flowers are the means by which most plants continue their species, providing food for all higher forms of life. (For example, foods such as oranges, corn, barley, bread, saffron, coconut, shiitake, or any other mushroom, fruit, herb, or grain, rely on flowers for their genesis.)
Medicine 
Flowers also specialize in certain nutrients and chemicals in surprising arrays. In fact, plants and flowers are evolved intelligences for the transposition of water and the self-directing of certain elements, molecules, and polymers. Different plants may have surprisingly diverse sets of polymers, some of which are poisonous, others curative, still more psychoactive. In short, flowers offer a natural medicine cabinet for the discerning botanist, a ready cure for nearly all of nature's ills. In the Amazon, for just one example, certain cures are made by shamans for diabetes -- modern science is still incapable of replicating them, although their effects have been observed. This is one prime reason, among many more, of preserving rain forests. There are so many species of plants in such areas, it is believed by some scientists that less than five percent of all plant species in the Amazon have been classified, and still many more have been made extinct.
Soils
Everything on Earth is integrated so that no single life exists without affecting another. Flowers, and the plants that bloom them, play a vital role in transforming soil substrates into organic horizons, layers of mineral-soils that have been transformed into organic matter by the life and death of plants. These soils become more fertile and better suited for sustaining the growth and proliferation of plant species. This is how life exerts a preference upon the conditions most favorable for its own development. In other words, one of the prime functions of life -- and flowers -- is to force a selection-pressure upon natural conditions, concluding in self-sustained existence whereby life, in all forms, proliferates over time.
Symbolism and the poetry of life 
Flowers have long been symbols of mortality, beauty, and love. Because flowers are produced during natural cycles -- plant cycles integrated with the Moon, the Sun, and the movement of the seasons, themselves symbolic of change, growth and diminution, life and death -- they are ephemeral: They bud, bloom, and decay. Such beauty is all the more startling because it is temporary. Like the mandalas Tibetan monks draw with sand grains, only to blow away once finished, life arises like a flash in a wave. Flowers near perfectly embody this glorious temporariness, where everything is constantly turning into everything else. Through the temporary the permanent is maintained. Through the mortal the immortal is glimpsed. And by their mere existence, which is infinite in beauty and possibility, if limited in time and materiality, they make further life all the more possible. And, perhaps more importantly, enjoyable
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