2010-06-28 23:13EU state flowersThe opportunity to speak with Americans about their federal system is one I rarely turn down, as it helps me understand Europe’s federal system. While talking to a particular American, I found that, despite the stereotypes, they did not believe that the EU was a federal country, and although this meant they agreed with the vast majority of Europeans on the matter, I decided to dismiss their view as uninformed and presented them with a video of the EU president celebrating the EU national day by reading a speech and watching the EU flag being lifted by members of the EU army, followed by a military band performance of the EU national anthem. I feel, though, that to really convince an American (and possibly a European too) that the EU is a country, I must provide a list of the state flowers of each of the EU states, which was, as I explained in an earlier blog post, one of the only things the EU was missing. The list
The notesThe process I used to generate the above list was to look first at the relevant Wikipedia page, then in the case of missing values or collisions (two or more states sharing the same flower) refer to the website of a self-described Flower Expert, and finally resort to searches of the wider web if more information was still needed. Avoiding collisions was very important to me, even though Illinois, New Jersey and Rhode Island all share the violet as their state flower. I think it reflects the floral and historical diversity of the EU states for them to have such a wide range of flowers, and if some of the states have multiple flowers, that only adds to their cultural richness, even if some of those alternative flowers coincide with other alternative state flowers. There are some notable entries in the list though which I should say a few words about, though. Firstly I could point out that several of the flowers are actually named after the states, or things within those states. Cyprus cyclamen, Maltese rock-centaury, and Romanian peony are two obvious examples, but the alpine gentian counts too (even if it is perhaps more accurately called the snow gentian) and so does the Tudor rose, being named after a family who were living in the UK. Sadly both this rose and the rose L’Indépendance du Luxembourg are slight cheats to get on this list, but for different reasons. Alphabetically considering the Luxembourg case first, all records I found said that the floral emblem of Luxembourg, if it had one, was the rose, but this would lead to a conflict with Bulgaria (if specifically a red rose) and possibly a conflict with both Finland and the UK too (if no colour is specified). The solution I found to this dilemma was to keep searching for pages about Luxembourg and roses until I found one which knew a lot about roses and mentioned a specific variety. It may not have any official status, but this rose was created on the initiative of the association “Letzeburger Rousefrënn” (Luxembourg Friends of the Rose) and celebrates Luxembourg’s 150-year independence which was in 1989. The UK’s flower is even stranger, however, for two reasons: firstly, it doesn’t belong to the UK, and secondly it isn’t a flower. What I mean is, technically the Tudor rose is the symbol for England, not necessarily the UK as a whole, and that it is a fictional flower, representing the combination of the red rose (of Lancaster) and the white rose (of York). I think that having a mythical flower is acceptable, especially as we never know what future genetic engineers will be able to create (and because there already exist spectacular cultivated roses which could represent the Tudor rose just fine) but justifying its selection to represent the whole of the United Kingdom is a little more tricky. The best argument I have come up with is that, just as London is the capital of both England and the UK, and just as the lion is the animal which represents both England and the UK, I think it is fair for the Tudor rose to be promoted to use by the UK as a whole. One alternative argument would be that as the Queen’s principle residence is in England, and as she is the head of state for the UK, then the flower of England should be chosen (unless the Queen moves house, in which case the Northern Irish, Scottish or Welsh flower should take precedence). Moving on, one of the entries above that I found particularly difficult was Italy, which is reflected in the number of flowers listed for it. Of these, only cyclamen is given on Wikipedia as the correct answer, but other sites online claimed that Italy had no floral emblem. The other four flowers mentioned are from the Flower Expert site, and I’m not sure how accurate they are, since the white poppy is the opium poppy, which I hadn’t associated with Italy before. Fortunately if Greece is assigned the laurel branch as its floral or at least botanical representation, then Italy can have the violet as its unique symbol. I hope it doesn’t stretch the definition of the exercise to have plants other than flowers to signify these states, as Germany is in a similar situation to Greece in having a tree to represent it (the cornflower being reserved for Estonia). Like the laurel and Spain’s pomegranate, though, the oak tree can blossom even if it doesn’t make for a conventional flower. Even more unconventional, though, and controversial, is the inclusion of “wheat” for Sweden. Wikipedia itself claims that Sweden does not have an overall floral emblem, but the Flower Expert thinks it knows better and lists linnaea, which was news to a Swedish friend I asked. However, he will probably be happier with that choice than with wheat, which I imaginatively came up with based on the stylised sheaf found on the official coat of arms of Sweden due to the influence of the House of Vasa. The last contentious issue worth mentioning is that of the flowers for the Czech Republic and Slovakia, two states which were for a long time joined as one. While they certainly have their differences, there was no guarantee that this would extend into the botanical realm, and both Wikipedia and the Flower Expert assign the same flower to them. It was only after some frantic searching online that I found two sites list “scented thyme”, and both of the sites had nothing listed for Slovakia, by which I must conclude that Slovakia does not have scented thyme as its emblem. Case closed. (Actually, I didn’t realise until rather late in the editing process for this post that I had just “tulip” listed for both the Netherlands and for Hungary, and this has required some extremely imaginative web searching. It appears that there are people who associate the geranium with Hungary, and because the geranium is not listed for any other state, I think Hungary can feel proud to claim this flower as its own. Another late realisation was that the field poppy, the corn poppy and the red poppy are all the same plant, so I had to research on the web until I found that the azalea is considered a floral emblem for Belgium.) ConclusionSo, Europe is botanically diverse and has brought lots of discoveries and creations to the world of botany. Uniqueness of flower is apparently possible, for some value of “flower” and provided you accept some less well-known sources of information. Having said that, there is still a lot of similarity and overlap between the choices listed above, but that just reflects the unity and commonality of the member states. “United in diversity”. That just leaves the question of what flower represents the EU as a whole? Some sort of stylised European rose with one petal for each member state? Trackbacks
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