Gladiolus

The gladiolus, Gladiolus, is a corm-grown plant of tall one-sided spikes of funnel-flowers, native chiefly to Africa and the Mediterranean; its name is the Latin for a little sword, from the shape of its long pointed leaves, the same root as gladiator. That martial name shaped its symbolism from the classical world: the gladiolus was associated with the Roman gladiators, and to give it was to invoke strength, victory and moral integrity, the flower standing for a person of upright and unbending character, sharp and strong as its own leaf.

Although the name and its martial symbolism are Roman, the modern florist's gladiolus is very largely a nineteenth-century creation: of the roughly two hundred and sixty wild Gladiolus species, the great majority native to southern Africa, European and especially Dutch and Belgian breeders crossed a handful of South African species from the 1830s onward to produce the tall, large-flowered garden hybrids sold today, so that the sword-shaped leaf is ancient in name but the towering modern spike of bloom is a comparatively recent horticultural invention. South Africa remains the plant's true centre of wild diversity, with dozens of species found nowhere else, a botanical richness largely unknown to the Roman world that gave the flower its name.

In the language of flowers the gladiolus stands above all for strength of character, faithfulness and the piercing of the heart, sometimes given the sense of infatuation, a heart transfixed as by a sword. As the birth-flower of August it carries meanings of sincerity, integrity and generosity. Its tall, upright, sword-like spike made it a natural emblem of moral firmness and of remembrance, and it is often used in commemoration and at funerals for that reason. The whole of its symbolism grows from the single image in its name, the little sword, turning a spike of showy summer flowers into a sign of strength, honour and an unbending heart.

In the Western tradition of wedding anniversary flowers, the gladiolus is specifically assigned to the fortieth anniversary, a comparatively minor but still-observed piece of the same symbolic vocabulary that gave it its meanings of strength and constancy, a fitting flower for a milestone reached only through many years of a marriage's own endurance. Its tall one-sided spike, opening from the bottom upward over one to two weeks, also made it a practical favourite of florists, since a single stem provides a long season of usable bloom rather than a single fleeting flush.