Ed Valauskas, the curator of rare books at the Chicago Botanic Gardens and current holder of the Follett Chair at Dominican, gave a great talk in my Digital Libraries class this morning. It lagely focused on how the Garden went about digitizing and marketing their many rare volumes, one of which was a small book that described the language of flowers. In Victorian Europe it was very popular to send a message in the form of a flower bouquet. Upon receiving your boquet you'd fetch your language of flowers book and decode it. Here's an extensive decoder. Why not send the love of your life some Syrian Mallow and your mom a handful of moss? If you're with enemy, don't hesitate to send them a Wild Licorice and Tansy smackdown!
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