Zinnia Meaning and Symbolism: What Each Color Says, From Scarlet Constancy to the Flower That Bloomed in Space

In January 2016, astronaut Scott Kelly opened a plant chamber aboard the International Space Station and photographed an orange zinnia with the black of space behind it.

It was the first flowering plant coaxed into bloom on the ISS.

NASA could have picked something prestigious. They picked the flower your grandmother grew along the driveway.

That choice says everything about the zinnia meaning.

This is the flower of stubborn cheerfulness — the one that blooms in bad soil, brutal heat, and apparently zero gravity.

Victorian flower dictionaries gave it a quieter job: thoughts of absent friends.

Send zinnias and you are saying something specific.

Not I adore you. Something closer to distance has not changed anything.

And because zinnias come in nearly every color a petal can manage, the message shifts shade by shade.

Here is what each one carries.

🌸 Flower Profile

Scientific Name	Zinnia elegans (now formally Zinnia violacea)
Family	Asteraceae — the daisy and sunflower family
Origin	Dry grasslands and scrubland of Mexico and the southwestern United States
Blooming Season	Early summer until the first hard frost — roughly June through October in most temperate gardens
Primary Meaning	Thoughts of absent friends, endurance, and affection that survives distance

Color Meanings

Table of Contents

• 1. Scarlet Red
• 2. Pink
• 3. White
• 4. Yellow
• 5. Orange
• 6. Magenta and Purple
• 7. Lime Green
• 8. Bicolor and Mixed

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1. Scarlet Red

Meaning: Constancy — loyalty that holds its position without needing applause

💡 At a Glance

Shade Variations: True scarlet is the classic constancy shade — clean, warm, and slightly orange-leaning.

Crimson and cherry read cooler and more romantic, which is why florists reach for them in Valentine-adjacent arrangements.

Wine and burgundy, as in the heirloom Benary's Giant Wine, carry a heavier, more adult note — gratitude and long marriage rather than new infatuation.

Scarlet-and-gold bicolors from the Zinnia haageana side of the family soften the message toward warmth and celebration.

Stems & Styling: Twelve scarlet stems is the traditional count for loyalty, borrowed straight from the rose convention — and zinnias cost a fraction of roses in August.

Zinnias have hollow, slightly fuzzy stems that bend under their own weight, so build with support: woody branches, amaranth, or a tight grid of tape across the vase mouth.

Pair scarlet zinnias with rudbeckia, dahlias, and bronze fennel for a late-summer bouquet that looks collected rather than bought.

One rule above all others — pick scarlet zinnias fully open. They do not continue opening in the vase.

The scarlet zinnia did not earn its meaning through poetry.

It earned it through August. Think about what a nineteenth-century flower bed looked like by late summer.

Roses blackspotted and sulking.

Sweet peas finished and crisping on their strings.

And there, unbothered, a row of scarlet zinnias still throwing out blooms.

Gardeners notice that kind of behavior.

It reads as character.

When the Victorians sat down to assign meanings, they were not inventing symbolism from nothing.

They were describing what they had watched happen in their own gardens.

Constancy was not a metaphor. It was an observation. The scarlet shade carried the message best because red already meant devotion in the European vocabulary.

Put red on a flower that physically refuses to quit, and the meaning sharpens.

Not passion. Persistence.

That distinction matters when you are choosing a gift.

A red rose says I am overwhelmed by you right now.

A scarlet zinnia says I was here last year and I will be here next year.

One of those is easier to live up to. This is the bouquet for a tenth anniversary rather than a first date.

For the friend who drove four hours when it mattered.

For the colleague who covered for you and never mentioned it again.

Scarlet zinnias are cheap, they last ten days in a vase, and they mean the single most expensive thing a person can offer.

Showing up repeatedly.

The Victorians knew what they were doing.

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2. Pink

Meaning: Enduring affection and gentle remembrance — warmth without pressure

💡 At a Glance

Shade Variations: Bubblegum and hot pink are the exuberant end — birthday energy, new babies, good news.

Coral and salmon pinks bridge toward orange and read as warm encouragement rather than sentiment.

Dusty rose and blush, the shades florists chase in cultivars like Queen Lime Blush, carry nostalgia and a slightly melancholy elegance — ideal for weddings and for remembrance.

Pale shell pink is the softest statement in the whole zinnia family: comfort, convalescence, quiet care.

Stems & Styling: Pink zinnias are the best gateway flower for anyone nervous about color. They mix with almost anything.

For a modern look, keep it monochrome — fifteen stems of blush and dusty rose in a low bowl, nothing else.

For a cottage look, pair with cosmos, snapdragons, and dill flower, and let the stems lean naturally instead of forcing a dome.

Five stems is a lovely give-away count: enough to feel deliberate, small enough that the recipient does not feel they owe you anything.

Pink zinnias are the flower of the back door, not the front.

They were never grown to impress visitors.Old American seed catalogs tell you this plainly.

Zinnias were sold as cut-and-come-again — the more you took, the more you got.

That is an unusual thing for a flower to offer.

Most blooms punish harvesting.

The zinnia rewards it.

A plant that produces more the more you give away is a strange and generous machine.

Pink is the shade that best expresses that logic.

It is the color you cut without counting.

For the neighbor recovering from surgery.

For the teacher on the last day of term.There is a reason the farmer-florist movement rebuilt itself on this flower.

Zinnias made local flowers economically possible again.

And the shades those growers resurrected were not the loud ones.

They were the soft ones — blush, antique rose, dusty coral.

Colors that look like a faded photograph rather than a greeting card.Which brings you back to the Victorian meaning.

Thoughts of an absent friend, in pink, is the most useful message in the whole flower language.

It works for the friend who moved across the country.

It works for the person you lost touch with for no bad reason.

It works for a grandmother on a Tuesday.

No occasion required.

That is exactly what makes it worth sending.

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3. White

Meaning: Goodness — pure intention, consolation, and respect freely given> 💡 At a Glance

Shade Variations: Pure chalk white, as in the heirloom Polar Bear, is the formal choice — crisp enough for sympathy work and weddings.

Ivory and cream warm the message toward congratulation and hospitality.

Green-white, where the petal base keeps a lime cast, reads contemporary and pairs beautifully with foliage-heavy arrangements.

White with a visible golden eye — the open, single-flowered forms — looks daisy-like and cheerful, which makes it better for get-well gifts than for funerals.

Stems & Styling: White zinnias photograph as slightly gray on their own, so give them contrast: dark foliage, deep plum dahlias, or black-stemmed scabiosa.

For sympathy arrangements, choose the fully double forms and strip every leaf below the waterline — zinnia foliage turns slimy fast and no one wants to deal with that at a difficult time.

An all-white zinnia bouquet in a clear glass jar is one of the most quietly elegant arrangements available for under ten dollars.

Avoid mixing white zinnias with pure white roses; the textures compete and both lose.

White zinnias do a job most flowers cannot.

They show up in June.That sounds trivial.

It is not.

The traditional memorial flowers of European custom — lilies, chrysanthemums, white roses — either cost money or bloom at the wrong time.

A family in rural Tennessee in 1920 had neither a florist nor a greenhouse.

They had a seed packet and a hot south-facing strip of dirt.

So white zinnias became the flower of remembrance by availability.

Which is how most real traditions start.The Victorian meaning of goodness sits comfortably on top of that history.

Goodness is a modest word.

It does not mean saintliness or passion or sacrifice.

It means being decent, consistently, when nobody is grading you.

That is precisely the quality you remember about people after they are gone.

Not their achievements.

Their reliability.So white zinnias work in two directions.

Send them to honor someone who has died, and the message is well chosen.

Send them to someone still here who has been quietly good to you, and it is better still.

Most people never get told that.

A jar of white zinnias is an easy way to say it without making a speech.

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4. Yellow

Meaning: Daily remembrance — being thought of routinely, not occasionally> 💡 At a Glance

Shade Variations: Lemon and pale primrose, the register of the old Canary Bird strain, feel delicate and read as gentle, habitual affection.

Golden yellow is the confident shade — congratulation, encouragement, good luck.

Yellow-lime, now a florist favorite in the Queen and Queeny series, reads modern and slightly edgy, excellent for people who claim to dislike yellow.

Deep amber and butterscotch shade toward orange and pick up its optimism and warmth.

Stems & Styling: Yellow zinnias need a cooling partner or they can go strident. Blue is the fix — delphinium, cornflower, or simply a cobalt vase.

Seven stems of mixed lemon and gold makes a cheerful desk bouquet that survives an office with no natural light.

For a congratulations gift, pair yellow zinnias with sunflowers and grasses so the arrangement looks abundant rather than small.

Change the water every two days; yellow zinnias show murky water more obviously than dark shades do.

Daily remembrance is the best meaning in the flower language and almost nobody uses it.

Yellow zinnia owns it.Consider what the phrase is actually describing.

Not an anniversary.

Not a dramatic reunion.

The low, continuous hum of having someone in your head.

That is what long friendship feels like.

And long-distance family.

And grief, eventually, once it softens into something you can carry.The Victorians had a reason to pick yellow for it.

Sunlight is the most repetitive beautiful thing there is.

It turns up every morning and no one applauds.

A zinnia behaves the same way.

One plant will produce flowers from July to October without being asked.

You stop noticing. Then you notice again.Van Gogh understood the practical version of this.

In 1886 he was teaching himself to paint bright, and he needed flowers that held their color and did not cost much.

Market zinnias did the work.

There is a straight line from that studio in Paris to a plant chamber on the ISS in 2016.

Both times, someone needed a flower that would simply perform.

Both times the zinnia did.

Send yellow zinnias to the person you think about constantly and never tell.

The flower has been waiting a hundred and fifty years for that message.

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5. Orange

Meaning: Bold optimism and resilience — thriving in conditions that should not allow it> 💡 At a Glance

Shade Variations: Pure tangerine is the headline shade — energetic, confident, slightly loud in the best way.

Coral-orange softens toward pink and works in wedding palettes that would reject true orange.

Burnt orange and rust, the autumnal end, carry maturity and harvest warmth — ideal for October tables.

Orange-and-magenta bicolors, the Zowie-type flowers, are pure celebration and should be used where subtlety is not the goal.

Stems & Styling: Orange zinnias are the backbone of a good late-summer bouquet. Build around them rather than beside them.

Pair with deep purple — basil flower, purple amaranth, dark scabiosa — for the single most reliable color contrast in the August garden.

For a housewarming or new-job gift, nine orange stems in a sturdy ceramic jug reads confident and costs almost nothing.

If you want the arrangement to feel designed, add one textural element with no color at all: bare twigs, wheat, or seeded grass.

The most famous zinnia in history grew 250 miles above the Pacific Ocean.

It was orange.The story is better than the photograph.

The ISS zinnia crop went badly at first.

The leaves curled.

Mold took hold in the low airflow.

Two plants died outright.

The watering schedule had been set on the ground, by people who could not see the plants.

So Scott Kelly asked to be trusted with it himself.

He got the discretion, adjusted the water by eye, and the remaining plants recovered.That is a perfect symbolic package for the color.

Orange zinnia does not mean untroubled happiness.

It means coming back from a bad start.

Which is also what the flower does on Earth.

Look at where orange zinnias actually thrive.

Roadsides. Parking strips. Gravel. The hot neglected side of a building.

Places no one waters.This is the shade to send someone starting over.

New apartment after a hard year.

First day at a job they were not sure they would get.

Someone out of hospital and walking again.

White zinnias console. Pink zinnias comfort.

Orange zinnias say go.

NASA chose that color by accident and could not have chosen better.

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6. Magenta and Purple

Meaning: Lasting affection — love that has already proven it will stay> 💡 At a Glance

Shade Variations: Hot magenta is the signature — unmissable, slightly theatrical, impossible to photograph accurately.

Fuchsia and raspberry lean pink and read as joyful rather than serious.

Plum and violet-purple, as in older Purple Prince types, carry dignity and suit formal gifts and milestone anniversaries.

Magenta with a lime-green eye, common in the Queen series, is the florist's darling — contemporary, slightly strange, and beautiful in neutral interiors.

Stems & Styling: Magenta zinnias overpower soft palettes, so commit. Put them with orange and lime green for a palette that looks intentional instead of accidental.

Three magenta stems in a narrow bud vase is more effective than twelve crammed into a bowl — this color needs air around it.

For an anniversary, combine magenta zinnias with dark dahlias and a few stems of flowering mint; the scent does work the zinnia cannot, since zinnias are essentially fragrance-free.

Magenta fades slightly over a week in strong sun, so keep the vase out of a south window.

Magenta is the color zinnias choose when nobody is breeding them.

Leave a mixed packet to self-seed for a few years and magenta takes over.That is worth sitting with.

The shade that means lasting affection is also the shade that genuinely lasts.

It is the genetic default.

The pale blush and lime cultivars that florists love are human work, maintained by effort.

Magenta is what the plant reverts to on its own.

Which is a better metaphor for long love than anything the Victorians wrote down.There is also a fashion story here.

Magenta dye arrived in 1859 and Victorian Europe lost its mind over it.

For about a decade, magenta was modernity itself — chemical, bright, a little shocking.

And a Mexican daisy already had it.

Gardeners who could not afford a magenta silk gown could grow a bed of magenta zinnias from a sixpenny packet.

Fashion from a seed tray.The last thing to know about magenta zinnias is what visits them.

Monarchs.

Plant a row and you will feed butterflies heading to the mountains of Michoacán — the overwintering grounds in the flower's own homeland.

So the shade that means lasting affection also runs a fuel station for the longest insect migration on the continent.

For a milestone anniversary, say that out loud when you hand the bouquet over.

It beats a card.

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7. Lime Green

Meaning: Renewal and quiet confidence — growth that does not need to announce itself> 💡 At a Glance

Shade Variations: Chartreuse, the true Envy shade, is the purest green zinnia — acid-bright and excellent against burgundy.

Soft celadon and sage appear as blooms age and are prized for muted wedding palettes.

Lime-and-blush bicolors are the single most in-demand zinnia type in current florist work.

Lime fading to cream gives you two flowers from one stem over a week in the vase, which is a genuine practical bonus.

Stems & Styling: Green zinnias function as both flower and foliage, which makes them the most useful stem in a mixed bouquet.

Use them to break up colors that fight. Two lime stems between magenta and orange will calm the whole arrangement.

Against deep burgundy dahlias or dark plum scabiosa, lime zinnias look expensive — this is the combination that reads as designer work.

For weddings, condition them overnight in deep cool water before building; the pale shades show stress faster than the saturated ones.

A green flower is a small act of defiance.

Flowers are green's opposite. That is the whole point of petals.Petal color exists to advertise to pollinators against a green background.

A green flower gives up that advantage.

In nature it would be a mistake.

In a vase it is the most sophisticated thing in the arrangement.

Which is why the Envy zinnia became a cult object among florists while most gardeners walked past it.The meaning florists gave it is renewal.

That is easy to defend.

Green is the color of the start of things — new growth, bud break, the first week of spring.

A flower in that color reads as a beginning rather than a peak.

So lime zinnias belong at a wedding, a graduation, a first gallery show.

Moments that are openings disguised as conclusions.There is also the name problem, and it is a good one.

Green has meant envy in English since Shakespeare handed Othello the green-eyed monster.

The breeders named the cultivar Envy with full awareness.

So you can hand someone a bouquet that means renewal, grown from a packet labeled with the deadliest of the ordinary sins.

The Victorians would have adored that.

Use it on the friend who just got the thing you wanted.

Mean it sincerely. Let them figure out the joke later.

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8. Bicolor and Mixed

Meaning: Thoughts of an absent friend — the zinnia's oldest and truest message> 💡 At a Glance

Shade Variations: Persian Carpet types give small banded flowers in rust, gold, and mahogany — folk-pattern energy, excellent for autumn.

Picotee forms edge pale petals in a contrasting color and read as delicate and old-fashioned.

Magenta-and-orange bicolors like the Zowie type are pure spectacle.

Full garden mixes — State Fair, Benary's Giant mixed, Cut and Come Again — are the authentic Victorian reference and the right choice when the message is literally I miss you.

Stems & Styling: A mixed-zinnia bouquet needs one unifying element or it looks like a scramble. Pick one: a single foliage, a single vase color, or a tight hand-tied shape.

Count is part of the message here — a generous armful says long absence, while three stems in a jar says I was in the garden and thought of you.

Pair Persian Carpet types with wheat, grasses, and rudbeckia for a harvest-table arrangement.

If you are mailing flowers is impossible, press one bicolor bloom flat for a week and send it in the card instead — this is the original Victorian use.

The real zinnia meaning lives here, in the mixture.

Thoughts of absent friends.It helps to picture how that meaning was used.

A woman in Ohio in 1880 with a sister who had gone west.

Letters took weeks.

There were no photographs to send.

So she walked out to the zinnia bed, picked one flower, pressed it flat between book pages, and folded it into the envelope.

The recipient opened it and knew exactly what it meant.

No code book required, because everyone had the same seed packet.That is why the mixture carries the meaning and not a single shade.

The mixture was what people had.

Nobody in a farmhouse garden was curating a palette.

You shook the packet along a row and accepted the result.

Five colors in a foot of soil.

The flower of unplanned abundance.The striped Persian Carpet strain pushed the idea further.

Small flowers, banded like woven cloth, won an American award in 1952 and never left the catalogs.

They look handmade.

Which suits a message about people rather than occasions.

Indiana liked the flower enough to make it the state flower in 1931, then replaced it with the peony in 1957 — the zinnia being, as far as anyone can tell, the only state flower ever demoted.

It kept blooming regardless.

Absent friends, after all, is a meaning about continuing without recognition.

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Gift Guide by Occasion

1. Long-distance friendship or a care package

This is the zinnia's home turf — the Victorian mixed zinnia meant thoughts of absent friends. Cut flowers will not survive the mail, so do what the Victorians actually did: press one bloom flat between parchment inside a heavy book for seven to ten days, then tape it to a card. A pressed Persian Carpet bicolor keeps its banding beautifully. If you want something living, send a seed packet of a mixed strain instead and ask them to plant it in May — then you are both growing the same flower.

2. Housewarming or a fresh start after a hard year

Nine stems of orange zinnias in a sturdy ceramic jug, not a fragile glass vase — new-home chaos destroys delicate containers. Orange carries the resilience message, and zinnias last eight to twelve days, so the gift is still working when the boxes are finally unpacked. Bring the vase and let them keep it. Add a packet of zinnia seeds if they have any outdoor space at all; they germinate in under a week and bloom in two months from a direct sowing.

3. Sympathy and memorial

Choose fully double white zinnias, which carry the Victorian meaning of goodness, and keep the arrangement low and simple in an opaque container the family does not have to return. Strip every leaf below the waterline — zinnia foliage fouls water quickly and nobody should be dealing with a smelly vase during a wake. For a graveside visit in summer, white zinnias are historically the right flower, especially in American Decoration Day tradition, and a potted plant will keep flowering between visits where cut stems will not.### 4. Get well soon

Pale pink or lemon yellow, in a small jar that fits a hospital bedside table — a large bouquet is an imposition in a cramped room. Zinnias have essentially no fragrance, which makes them one of the few safe choices for people with nausea or scent sensitivity, and many hospital wards prefer it. Yellow carries daily remembrance, which is the honest message for someone in a long recovery. Check ward policy first; some units ban fresh flowers entirely, in which case send the seed packet and a promise.

5. Graduation or a first job

Lime green zinnias mixed with golden yellow, hand-tied with twine rather than cellophane so it photographs well. Green signals a beginning and yellow signals confidence, which is the right combination for someone leaving one institution for the unknown. Build the bunch flat-backed so it sits comfortably in the crook of an arm for photos. Avoid red here; scarlet zinnia means constancy, which is a strange thing to wish on someone who should be changing.

6. Late-summer or autumn wedding

Zinnias are a budget wedding's best friend in August and September, when they are at peak and garden roses are not. Build around Queen Lime Blush and dusty rose shades with burgundy dahlias for contrast, and condition every stem overnight in deep cool water before building. Harvest or buy only fully open blooms — zinnias do not continue opening after cutting, so tight buds will never improve. Keep the bouquet off a sunny windowsill the morning of; magenta and lime both fade in direct heat.

7. Thank you — teacher, neighbor, someone who quietly helped

Five to seven stems of pink in a jam jar, handed over without ceremony. The small count is deliberate: it reads as genuine rather than transactional, and the recipient is not left feeling they owe you a return gesture. Pink zinnia means enduring affection with nothing requested back, which is exactly right for someone who did you a kindness. If you grew them yourself, say so — a homegrown zinnia bunch carries more weight than a far more expensive florist arrangement.

The zinnia's history begins with an insult. The flower grew wild across Mexican grasslands and was cultivated in Aztec gardens long before Europeans arrived, but Spanish colonists were unimpressed by the small, straggly wild forms.

They reportedly nicknamed it mal de ojos — roughly, an eyesore.

Which sets up one of botany's better jokes. Seeds reached Europe in the mid-1700s and were grown and described by Johann Gottfried Zinn, a professor at Göttingen who was primarily an anatomist of the human eye. Linnaeus named the genus Zinnia in his honor in 1759, the year Zinn died at just thirty-two. The flower Spanish settlers called an eyesore now bears the name of an eye doctor permanently.

Victorian floriography then gave the zinnia its emotional vocabulary, and it is an unusually coherent set. Mixed zinnia meant thoughts of absent friends; scarlet meant constancy; white meant goodness; yellow meant daily remembrance; magenta meant lasting affection. Every one of those concerns continuity rather than passion. The Victorians also knew the plant as youth-and-old-age, because spent blooms stayed presentable on the stem while new ones opened beside them — a flower that aged without embarrassment.

In Mexico, the zinnia's homeland, it still appears in Día de Muertos arrangements alongside the dominant marigold, feeding the same tradition of calling absent people to mind. In the United States it became the default annual of the home garden through twentieth-century seed catalogs, Burpee's giant and State Fair strains among them, and white zinnias became a fixture of summer graveside plantings in Decoration Day and Memorial Day custom. Indiana named the zinnia its state flower in 1931 and then replaced it with the peony in 1957, making it the only American state flower ever voted out. Fifty-nine years after that demotion, an orange zinnia became the first flower brought to bloom aboard the International Space Station. The flower has never much minded what anyone decides about it.

• Cut only fully open blooms. Zinnias do not continue opening in the vase, so a tight bud will stay a tight bud. Use the florist's wiggle test: hold the stem a foot below the flower and shake gently. A floppy, nodding head means the stem is immature and will wilt within hours — a stem that holds the flower upright is ready.

• Harvest in the cool of early morning with sharp snips, cutting at an angle well down into the plant rather than snapping off short stems. Drop straight into a bucket of cool water, not a dry basket.

• Strip every leaf below the waterline. Zinnia foliage breaks down fast and turns vase water cloudy and foul within two days. This single step roughly doubles vase life.

• Change the water every two days and re-trim half an inch off each stem when you do. A single drop of household bleach per liter slows bacterial growth; commercial flower food helps less with zinnias than clean water does.

• Keep the vase away from fruit bowls, sunny windows, and heating vents. Ripening fruit releases ethylene gas, which ages cut flowers prematurely. Well-handled zinnias give eight to twelve days.

• In the garden, pinch and pick relentlessly. Pinch the growing tip when plants reach eight to twelve inches to force long, branching stems, then keep cutting. Zinnias were sold for a century as cut-and-come-again for a reason: harvesting makes them bloom harder, while leaving spent flowers on the plant shuts production down.

📌 Quick Summary

• Scarlet Red — Constancy — loyalty that holds its position without needing applause

• Pink — Enduring affection and gentle remembrance — warmth without pressure

• White — Goodness — pure intention, consolation, and respect freely given

• Yellow — Daily remembrance — being thought of routinely, not occasionally

• Orange — Bold optimism and resilience — thriving in conditions that should not allow it

• Magenta and Purple — Lasting affection — love that has already proven it will stay

• Lime Green — Renewal and quiet confidence — growth that does not need to announce itself

• Bicolor and Mixed — Thoughts of an absent friend — the zinnia's oldest and truest message

More Flower Meanings

• Carnation

• Chrysanthemum

• Iris

• Lotus

The thing worth remembering about zinnias is who grows them.

Not estate gardeners. Not greenhouse specialists.

People with a packet of seed, a hot strip of dirt, and no particular expectations.

That is the whole character of the flower.

It asks for almost nothing, blooms from July until frost kills it, and produces more the more you cut it.

A plant whose entire strategy is giving things away.

Which makes the Victorian meaning feel less like decoration and more like a conclusion someone reached after watching it for a few summers.

Thoughts of absent friends.

Goodness. Constancy. Daily remembrance.

None of those are grand feelings. They are maintenance work — the quiet business of keeping people in your life when nothing requires you to.

So if there is someone you have been meaning to contact for a year and keep not contacting, the flower has a suggestion.

It costs about three dollars a packet.

And it will keep making the point all summer, whether you take it or not.