Writer wit Oscar Wilde popularized wearing a Green Carnation as a gay symbol in 1892. He instructed his friends to wear them on their lapels to the opening of his comedy. Lady Windermere’s Fan. Subsequently, it became a coded symbol that a man was attracted to men.

Sappho (c.630-c.570), the Greek poet who lived on the island of the Lesbos, often referenced violets in her ancient poems creating this association for female love. Girls frolicked adorned in garlands and had ‘‘many crowns of violets.’’

‘‘Together you set before more

and many scented wreaths

made from blossoms

around your soft throat…

…with pure, sweet oil

…you anointed me’’

The coded reference to violets in the pantheon of female love endured for centuries. In fact, a scandal occurred in 1926 when a female character in the play The Captive sent a bunch of violets to another female character. Literary scholar Sherrie Inness reported in the National Women’s Studies Association Journal that the theme of lesbianism in this play led to an uproar and calls for censorship. Subsequently, the New York City district attorney’s office shut down the production in 1927.

Violet sales also plummeted as a result of the association.

However, at the play’s showing in Paris, some women wore the flower on their lapels as a show of support.

In his play, Suddenly Last Summer, Tennessee Williams also weaved violets and its symbolism into the plot by naming a character Mrs. Violet Venable.

Marcel Proust’s Sodome et Gomorrhe referred to male-male courtship as being similar to the process of flower fertilization. Men were called “an evening botanist,” “buttercup,” or “horticultural lad.”

However, as Christopher Looby wrote in his book, Flowers of Manhood, pansy is the term that stuck—especially for those who dressed flamboyantly. The bold bright colors of the flower may have been what triggered the association.

As a result, many gay bars throughout history had names such as “The Pansy Club.”

There were periods when these bars were more accepted than others. In Harlem in 1869, the masquerade balls became popular. Later in the 1920s, drag queens like Jean Malin helped popularize gay-friendly bars in major cities, a trend that historian George Chauncey called “the Pansy Craze.”

Whereas the late 19th century restricted gay male activity to the seedy red-light district under the elevated train of the Bowery, with an even less visible lesbian life largely restricted to private salons for upper-class women, prohibition allowed the first emergence of a visible gay and lesbian life.

Prohibition forced all kinds of people to mix—all in search of the same illicit drink, and created a culture of at least mild tolerance if not outright “anything goes.” That shift raised awareness for outdated moralism of the Temperance movement.

These popular clubs were able to exist without pushback for a while. But the rise of Nazism and Hollywood homophobia, due to the Hays Commission, drove the clubs back underground. Post-war created more conservatism that resulted in the 1960s where love and tolerance were embraced once again in cities.

Roses are a flower sometimes referenced for the trans community.

‘Give us our roses while we are still here,’ popularized by Black Transgender Artist B. Parker, in hopes that we all honour, celebrate, support, and elevate Trans People in life, not in moments of loss, tragedy, grief, and mourning.

This concept was also addressed in a photography exhibit called “The Rose Project.”