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
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
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Related records
- 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 recording and a colour you had to think about probably is not.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- SymbolBloodBlood in dreams is reported far more often as vitality, kinship or alarm than as violence. The most useful question is whose it was, and whether anyone in the dream reacted.
- SymbolBridgeBridges are transition made literal, and they are almost always reported with a decision attached: cross, turn back, or find that the bridge will not hold.