Dreaming about flowers
Flowers are among the few dream images where colour is reliably noticed, which is unusual given how little colour is reported generally. Where a flower is remembered, its colour usually is too.
Also searched as: a flower, flowers in a dream, a bouquet, blossom, wilting flowers
The colour salience is the distinctive finding. Most dream reports do not mention colour at all, and flower reports frequently do, unprompted.
Wilting or dying flowers are the more reported state, and they carry the same disproportionate sadness the fallen-tree reports do.
Receiving flowers is a distinct group and is usually about who gave them rather than about the flowers.
Flowers growing where they should not, indoors, through a floor, out of an object, are reported and produce delight rather than alarm.
Common associations
- Colour that is actually noticed, which is rare.
- A state rather than an object: fresh, opening, wilting.
- Giving and receiving.
- Growth in the wrong place, which dreamers enjoy.
Positive readings
Broadly positive reports, and the growing-in-the-wrong-place version is described with real delight.
Flowers connected to somebody who has died sit with the bereavement material and are reported warmly.
Difficult readings
Wilting produces sadness rather than fear, and dreamers frequently attach it to a person or a situation without being prompted.
Otherwise there is very little.
Psychological perspectives
The colour salience is worth noting because it cuts against the general finding. Colour is under-reported in dreams, and an image that reliably carries it is doing something unusual.
The simplest account is that a flower is largely defined by its colour, so a dream that generates one has to generate the colour too, where a wall does not.
The state emphasis, fresh against wilting, is the elapsed-time pattern this file rests on.
Cultural and historical
Specific flowers carry specific and highly local meanings, and the Victorian language of flowers is one elaborate example among many.
Flowers at funerals, at weddings and at shrines are near-universal practices with entirely different content in each case.
Chrysanthemums, white flowers and particular blooms carry funerary associations in some cultures and celebratory ones in others, which is the usual warning against a single reading.
What the sleep science says
Observed: colour is reported more reliably for flowers than for most dream content.
Reasonably supported: the general under-reporting of colour in dreams, against which this stands out.
Not established: any meaning for flowers generally or for particular species.
Your own context
- What colour, and did you notice at the time?
- What state were they in?
- Did somebody give them to you?
- Do those flowers mean anything where you are from?
If this recurs
Log the colour and the state. Both are unusually well reported for flowers and both are the parts that move.
Emotions often reported
- tenderness
- wonder
- melancholy
- affection
- calm
- joy
Specific flowers dreams
Each of these is written separately, not generated from this page.
Where it happened
What state it was in
Questions for reflection
These are for your journal, not for us. Nothing you write is shared.
- What colour were they?
- Did I notice that in the dream?
- Were they fresh or going over?
Dream interpretation is subjective. Nothing here is a diagnosis, a prediction, or medical advice.
Sources and reviewed references
4 references. What these labels mean
- 1.The Scientific Study of Dreams: Neural Networks, Cognitive Development and Content AnalysisAcademic book
G. William Domhoff (2003) · American Psychological Association
Cited for: The continuity hypothesis (that dream content largely reflects waking concerns) and a sustained critique of symbolic dream interpretation as an evidential method.
- 2.Gender Differences in Dream Recall: A Meta-AnalysisPeer-reviewed research
Michael Schredl and Iris Reinhard (2008) · Journal of Sleep Research
Cited for: Dream-recall frequency as a measurable, individually stable trait, and the factors that move it.
- 3.The Content Analysis of DreamsAcademic book
Calvin Hall and Robert Van de Castle (1966) · Appleton-Century-Crofts
Cited for: The standard coding system for dream content, and the normative frequencies that later studies are compared against. The reason claims like "aggression is more common in dreams than friendliness" can be stated numerically at all.
- 4.Oneirocritica (The Interpretation of Dreams)Historical dream record
Artemidorus of Daldis (200)
Cited for: The earliest surviving systematic dream dictionary, and evidence that dream interpretation has been organised by symbol and by the dreamer's circumstances for at least eighteen centuries.
Dreamers’ accounts
How dreams of flowers have gone for other people, in their own words. Nothing here is an interpretation of anyone else's dream. It is a record of what happened and what it was like.
Nothing here yet. Be the first to say how this has gone for you.
Related records
- PlaceGardenGardens are described more positively than almost any other setting, and the two states that dominate the reports, tended and overgrown, are described very differently. The state of the garden carries the dream, not the garden.
- EventWeddingWedding dreams are dominated by things going wrong: the wrong dress, the wrong person, nobody arriving. The commitment is rarely the anxiety; the ceremony is.
- EventFuneralA funeral in a dream does not predict a death. It is one of the most reliable images the mind has for an ending, and it appears far more often around change than around bereavement.
- ColourColour in dreamsMost people report dreaming in colour, and most dream reports never mention it. Both are true, and the gap between them is why a colour you remember clearly is worth a line in the journal and a colour you had to think about probably is not.
- SymbolA crackCracks are one of the few things dreams reliably show growing, which is unusual: dreams produce states far more readily than transitions, and a spreading crack is a transition being watched.
- SymbolA holeA hole is an absence with edges, and dreams handle it the way they handle every absence: the edges are generated and what is beyond them is not. Dreamers report being unable to see in, and being certain about what is there.
Records that mention flowers
These pages link to flowers, either as something reported in the same dream or as a related subject. This page does not point back at all of them, so the list is assembled rather than chosen.