Here we continue our appeal for queer (LGBTQ+) plant-lore, posted on 23 June 2022.

Please send any information to roy@plant-lore.com

9. To mark LGBTQ+ History Month 2025 the Chelsea Physic Garden in London, produced a leaflet entitled ‘A Dash of Lavender – Celebrating diversity in people and plants’.  According to this:  ‘Historically … gay men [were] called ”pansies” [Viola x wittrockiana] or said to have ”a dash of lavender” [Lavandula spp.].

In his Some Men in London, vol.2, Queer Life 1960-1967, Peter Parker notes (p.345) that the English film star Dirk Bogarde (1921-99):  ‘Never admitted his homosexuality, but lived with a long-term partner, the actor Anthony Forwood  … Bogarde nevertheless seems to have refused to enter a lavender marriage, even though this may have robbed him of a career in Hollywood’.

Presumably referring to the colour lilac, rather than directly to the plant, lavender marriages were marriages entered into when one or both partners wanted to conceal their homosexuality.

Holly Elsdon, of the Todmorden Folklore Centre, draws our attention to the Lavender Scare, ‘a moral panic in the U.S.A. in the mid twentieth century [c.1947-75] over the supposed security threat posed by gay and lesbian federal employees’.

10.  In an on-line discussion (accessed in August 2025) on the sexuality of J.D. Vance, the U.S. Vice-president,  a post states that Oscar Wilde was ‘as queer as a daffodil‘ [Narcissus cv.].

An internet search comes up with ‘gay daffodil [is] … a slang term, though considered derogatory, for a homosexual or cross-dresser, stemming from a 1974 quote by Freddie Mercury where he used the phrase ”as gay as a daffodil”.’  See also Green’s Dictionary of Slang (2010) for earlier examples, dating back to the 1920s, of daffodils being associated with male homosexuality.

11. Trillium (Trillium spp.), a symbol of bisexuality.

Notice at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, photographed October 2025.

12.  Orange (Citrus sinensis).  In the late 1970s Anita Bryant, a former beauty-queen, singer, and ‘christian’, headed ‘Save our Children’, a virulently homophobic organisation, which aimed to prevent homosexuals from recruiting children to join their community.  Bryant declared: ‘As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children’.

From 1969-1980 Bryant was a spokeswoman for the Florida Citrus Commission: ‘A breakfast without orange juice is like a day without sunshine’.  The gay community retaliated by boycotting Florida orange juice.  According to Randy Shilts in his Life and Times of Harvey Milk, The Mayor of Castro Street (1982), ‘Florida orange juice … became a prime no-no and every gay bar [in San Francisco] prominently displayed signs explaining that any o.j. came strictly from California groves.’

13.  Rose (Rosa cvs).  According to a Portuguese herbalist attending an on-line talk on queer plant-lore in February 2026, roses are associated in a derogatory sense with gay men in Japan.

Upper image: lavender, Lavandula angustifolia, cultivated Mount Ephraim Lane, Streatham, London Borough of Lambeth, January 2025.

Last updated 10 March 2026.