#native habitat

Madrona Marsh

©Susan Kramer 2024 All Rights Reserved

Hi alexanderthemediocre!

As the Gilded Age (1870~1900) falls directly within the Victorian era (1837-1901) it’s reasonable to presume that the meanings carried over and were similar or even the same. Here’s a list of books for Victorian flower language for you to use or mention. Never mind the dates, unless you want to be extra accurate.

Wirt 1831

Shoberl 1839

Waterman 1840

Edgarton Mayo 1843

The Flowers Personified 1847

Dumont 1853

Language and Sentiment 1866

Tyas 1869

Greenaway 1884

Diffenbaugh 2011

The Victorian Bazaar

You can find their contents here on this chart.

All of these books are of your interest, despite the date on some. Robert Tyas (1869) and Edgarton Mayo (1843) can also be found through these links.

As for the local flowers, I can’t help you, unfortunately. For one because we know next to nothing about the climate during those time periods, as well as that we need a location, to begin with. That being said, chances are that what’s local now was also local back when. However, this excludes cultivated plants to some extent, namely all those which hadn’t already been developed. A lot of these plants will be hybrids, which are usually fairly easy to spot in name if you can come up with the latin one. Most of the time they will have an x in the middle of it, or seldom mention the word hybrid. This sort of also includes plants of the variety Cultivars, which however will grant you a little leeway because the s is only ever added when nobody can tell anymore how many strains were merged into the one at hand. Definitely more than two.

I hope this helps!

– Mod Jana

Coriander grows in meadows and fields and has been cultivated in Egypt for centuries if not millennia and Egypt is part of its native range (which extends from southern Europe to northern Africa to southwestern Asia). It sounds like you will be clear to have a coriander type plant in your setting.