Pride Month | 5 Flowers That Have Come to Symbolise the LGBTQ Movement & Why
Flowers have long served as quiet acts of solidarity – worn in lapels, carried through streets, planted at sites of injustice. Their connection to the LGBTQ+ movement runs deeper than colour alone, rooted in centuries of symbolism, defiance, and love.
Here, we trace that connection through five flowers that have come to represent the movement – from Sappho’s violets to the green carnations of Oscar Wilde – and explore why floral expression remains such a powerful part of Pride.
1. The History of Pride
The origins of Pride trace back to the Stonewall Riots of June 1969, when police raided a gay bar in New York City. The raids sparked days of protests – and a movement.
Image – Johannes Jordan (Wikimedia Commons)
Flowers were linked with the movement from its earliest days. In 1970, demonstrators carried blooms as they marched through Greenwich Village on the anniversary of the original riots – an event now regarded as the first ever Pride march.
The first Pride event in the UK took place on 1 July 1972. Britain is also home to the charity Stonewall, founded in 1989 to lobby for equal rights and now one of Europe’s largest LGBTQ+ rights organisations.
2. The Rainbow Flag
Eight years after the first Pride march, the rainbow flag became a familiar symbol of the LGBTQ+ community, designed by artist Gilbert Baker.
The six colours of the flag today each carry meaning:
- Red for life
- Orange for healing
- Yellow for sunlight
- Green for nature
- Indigo for serenity
- Violet for spirit
Baker’s original design featured eight stripes. Hot pink (for sex) and turquoise (for magic and art) were both removed over time, but the flag’s essential message of universality and belonging has only grown stronger.
3. Oscar Wilde and Green Carnations
On the opening night of Lady Windermere’s Fan in 1892, Oscar Wilde instructed several actors and friends to wear green carnations in their lapels. When asked what the gesture meant, he replied: “Nothing whatever, but that is just what nobody will guess.”
The act has been widely interpreted as a deliberate provocation – wearing an “unnatural” green flower as a way of challenging the era’s hostility towards love between men. There are accounts of gay men in Victorian England wearing green carnations to identify one another, making the bloom one of the earliest symbols of queer solidarity.
4. Sappho’s Violets
Sappho (c. 630–c. 570 BCE), the Greek poet who lived on the island of Lesbos – from which the word lesbian originates – associated violets with love between women. Her verse is among the earliest expressions of same-sex devotion in Western literature:
“Together you set before more
and many scented wreaths
made from blossoms
around your soft throat…
…with pure, sweet oil
…you anointed me.”
Violets continued to carry this symbolism through the centuries. In 1926, the play The Captive featured a female character sending violets to another woman. The production provoked such controversy that the New York City district attorney’s office ordered it closed the following year – and the sale of violets reportedly collapsed as a consequence.
Yet the backlash itself became a catalyst. When the play was performed in Paris, women wore violets on their lapels in open support. Playwright Tennessee Williams later named a character Mrs Violet Venable in Suddenly Last Summer as a knowing symbolic gesture.
Violet for spirit, fittingly, remains part of the rainbow flag today.
5. The Beauty and Colour of the Pansy
The word “pansy” was first associated with gay men in the early 1900s – a term whose history has been both celebratory and cruel.
During the 1920s and 1930s, underground drag balls in Los Angeles and New York drew large crowds. The performers were known as “pansy performers,” a reference to the vivid, colourful clothing they wore. This period – the Pansy Craze – was one of remarkable visibility and creativity.
After Prohibition ended, many of these venues were shut down, and the word pansy continued to be used about gay men, often in a derogatory way. In recent years, however, LGBTQ+ activists have reclaimed the flower as a symbol of hope and resilience.
Image – Pink News
Artist Paul Harfleet founded The Pansy Project, in which collaborators plant single pansies at sites where transphobic or homophobic discrimination has occurred. The colourful blooms symbolise hope and encourage reflection – an act made all the more resonant by the flower’s name, which derives from the French verb penser, meaning “to think.”
6. The Rose as a Symbol of Diversity
The LGBTQ+ community has embraced the rose – long a symbol of passion and romance – as an expression of love in all its forms.
Photographer Kristin Coffer explored this connection in The Rose Project, in which she gave each of her subjects – members of the trans, gay, queer, and non-binary community – a rose to hold as a representation of “diversity, beauty, and love.”
Among her most cherished images are those of her friend and collaborator Cash Askew, who is no longer with us. Cash holds a rose in these portraits, and it is their memory that became the impetus behind the project.
During Pride celebrations, “tie-dyed” and rainbow roses have become a familiar sight – their bright, layered colours a natural echo of the movement’s spirit.
7. Lavender
Both the flower and its colour are deeply intertwined with the history of gay and lesbian communities – though not always in ways that were intended to be kind.
In the 1920s, gay men were referred to as “Lavender boys,” a phrase meant to question their masculinity. Decades later, US writer and feminist Betty Friedan labelled lesbian involvement with the women’s movement as “the Lavender Menace.”
The response to Friedan’s remark became a defining moment. Lesbian feminist Rita Mae Brown and fellow activists attended a women’s conference wearing t-shirts printed with “Lavender Menace” – a deliberate act of reclamation that ultimately led to the women’s movement embracing them.
The Stonewall demonstrators of 1970 wore lavender in their lapels. And following the 2016 US presidential election, Gilbert Baker redesigned his rainbow flag to include a lavender stripe – a colour often interpreted as the blending of cultural blue (male) and pink (female), symbolising unity and love beyond binary.
8. Celebrating Pride with Flowers
Flowers have always been instruments of expression – carried in marches, worn in solidarity, planted in remembrance. That tradition continues at Pride events across the UK and around the world.
We have been proud to support Pride through our work, including creating floral designs for Erdem at their Mayfair flagship to celebrate the launch of a limited-edition t-shirt benefiting Not A Phase and akt. The design featured a carnation rendered in green, pink, blue, and white – the colours of the transgender pride flag.
Whether through a rainbow bouquet, a single symbolic bloom, or a large-scale installation, flowers remain one of the most eloquent ways to celebrate diversity, belonging, and love.
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