Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 11.2
Greek uses of the
Cornucopia or horn of plenty
shown here raining flowers
and fruit. (Photo credit: Neil
Anderson)
flowers and fruits on the ground during festivals and grand festivities. Cornucopias
are still used in modern celebrations to denote the abundant harvest, particularly
on Thanksgiving Day in Canada and the USA. Florists in the Roman Empire (28
bc-325 ad) continued the Egyptian and Greek traditions of making wreaths and
using garlands in celebrations. Roman wreaths and garlands became more deco-
rative with brighter colours and fragrant flowers (Hunter
2000
). Fragrant petals
and flowers were commonly used at Roman banquets, in the streets and floated on
lakes. As guests dined and reclined in the opulent Roman banquets, rose petals often
rained from the ceilings and piled up at their feet—often as deep as ~ 0.5 m. The
first artistic rendition of a naturalistic floral design can be found in a mosaic in the
Vatican Museum. Sympathic floral traditions included the “
Dies Rosationis
” where
the family would gather around the rose-covered grave of the recently deceased and
place additional roses in remembrance (Nicol
1826
). Another Roman floral tradi-
tion was the “
Sub Rosa
” where a wreath of white roses was hung from the ceiling
and all conversations beneath it were to be kept secret.
European aristocratic and monastic usage of flowers through the Byzantine pe-
riod, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, Baroque and Dutch-Flemish periods, to
the French, English and Victorian eras, all showed a progression of techniques,
employment of principles and elements of design, and the creation of floral indus-
tries to supply the vases, containers, palaces or estates to enable florists to make the
designs (Berrall
1968
). Many such changes in the art and science of floral design are
depicted in European paintings (Mitchell
1973
; Newdick
1991
).
The Byzantine period (320-600 ad), named after the city of Byzantium (later
Constantinople and now Istanbul in Turkey) was in the eastern sector of the Ro-
man Empire, and continued the Romantic flower uses and floral designs, although
garlands evolved into floral or fruit banks alternating with foliage. Symmetrical
