British botanist and vicar Henry Honeywood D’Ombrain had many reasons to be glad. 

He named more than 30 species of flowers, had a personal correspondence with Charles Darwin — with whom he “humbly begged  to differ  in toto coelo  from his conclusions” — was well known in his field and published many articles and books that rooted his place in botanical history. 

Perhaps what made him the gladdest, though, was his book on gladiolus flowers that first brought him notoriety. The short tome, published in 1873, starts out a bit tongue in cheek, “it is impossible to be poetical in writing on the gladiolus, for it would be as difficult to find a rhyme for it as for porringer. I cannot be sentimental — no lover could call his inamorata, My gladiolus.”   

Regardless of his delicate diss, gladiolus, a flower native to Africa and Eurasia, managed to evolve and prosper through the affection of many, spreading worldwide. A unique bloom, named from the Latin root gladius meaning sword, it is a tall, erect, multi-flowered stunner that captures hearts and minds.  

Mr. D’Ombrain explains in his book that “the growth of the gladiolus as a florists’ flower is a matter of about 20 years.” Sailing from Africa, Dutch and English ships brought them to Europe in the 1730s and 1740s, though their popularity didn’t blossom until botanists learned how to hybridize them for commercial purposes in the mid-1800s. 

Few were spared the gladi-mania that followed. Producers planted acres and acres of them and they became ubiquitous in gardens and popularized by artists including Monet and Van Gogh. This plant never went out of style, expanding to North America, and has been hybridized again and again to make new and different varieties. 

Gladioli come in purple, pink, red, white, yellow and orange, and can even be multicolored. They signify strength, morality, integrity, faithfulness, and remembrance. This flower, a member of the iris family, is the birth flower for August and the gift to honor 40 years of marriage.   

Roman gladiators wore them for protection during battles and the Greeks believed that they grew where someone was killed by a sword.  Legend had it that the flower first sprung from the blood of Apollo’s lover Hyacinth, who was inadvertently killed by a wayward discus. 

These lanky blooms, which are a challenge to keep upright, have come a long way from those days. Mine came not from the battlefield, but from corms (underground plant stem bases) hidden in the soil of a food plant given to me by a friend. Mr. D’Ombrain might have been onto something when he provided designs for a wooden box support system and bloom protector for the floral shows he frequented. 

Maybe the second to last word should go to American patent lawyer Frank Louis Neuhauser whose last word in the 1925 spelling bee was gladiolus. He spelled it correctly when he was 11 years old and won the first National Spelling Bee ever held. 

And for the last of the last words, let’s go back to Mr. D’Ombrain who, like me, wants you to favor these famous flowers, “I have thus completed the task I undertook, and if I shall have by so doing being the means of inducing anyone to venture on the culture of these beautiful flowers, I shall feel I have not written in vain.” 

Suzan Bellincampi is Islands director for Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary in Edgartown and the Nantucket Wildlife Sanctuaries. She is also the author of Martha’s Vineyard: A Field Guide to Island Nature and The Nature of Martha’s Vineyard.