Columbine, White Lily and Lupine. Secret message: It was a dream of folly, from which I woke to weep. Osgood, Frances Sargent (editor). The Floral Offering, A Token of Friendship (1847). Art by J. Ackerman. Contributed in BHL from Chicago Botanic Garden, Lenhardt Library. Digitization sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

Caxtonian Leora Siegel, Senior Director, Lenhardt Library wrote a recent blog post for the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) about editor Frances S. Osgood’s The Floral Offering, A Token of Friendship. The illustrated book explains the secret language of floral arrangements through illustrated bouquets, poems, and a floral dictionery.

The Lenhardt Library of the Chicago Botanic Garden is digitizing 62 rare nineteenth century language of flowers volumes as part of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Floral Offering is from the second set of volumes.

For more about the BHL, see the December 2019 issue of the Caxtonian.