It is said that the ladies of the harem in ancient Turkey made a game of guessing the hidden meanings of flowers. The Victorians elevated it to a subtle art, where not only the flowers and their colours, but also the arrangement of the posy, the tying of the ribbon and the hand with which it was offered and accepted were all supposed to convey a secret message.

The price of a scruffy bunch of red roses shoots up on St. Valentine’s Day. Carnations cost a fortune on Mothering Sunday one barely knows why. When your dinner guest comes to the door with a gift of heavy-headed chrysanthemums, is he thanking you for your loyal friendship or did he suddenly think ‘oh my gosh, I can’t turn up empty-handed’ - and they were all that was left on the forecourt of the local filling station.

You might not expect to find cornflowers in your bouquet, but it could be a compliment. They were a pagan symbol of delicacy and elegance. To Estonians they symbolised ones daily bread, and after the Estonian flag with its cornflower blue stripe was outlawed during the Soviet occupation, they came to represent liberty. Some sources cite the cornflower as a symbol of courage because although it looks delicate and fragile, it lasts through adverse weather and neither fades nor wilts. In Chinese mythology the cornflower represented the sky, the home of all the Chinese gods.

Named because they grew as weeds in cornfields, they are known by several other names: bachelor’s button, basket flower, bluebottle, or hurtsickle. Hurtsickle because the tough stems could blunt the reaper’s sickle; bachelor’s button for the tradition that a cornflower worn as a buttoniere by a young man in love would quickly fade if his love was in vain.

Cornflowers are of the genus Centaurea, a name linked to Greek mythology. Centaurs were generally represented as hard-drinking, hard-fighting creatures with the body of a horse and the torso and head of a man, but Chiron was a centaur known for his knowledge and skill with medicine. The story goes that he healed his poisoned battle wound using the petals of the cornflower and he is credited with teaching mankind the medicinal secrets of herbs and flowers.

Following Chiron’s example, a paste made with cornflowers was believed to neutralise poisons. The flowers were considered to be a stimulant and the leaves and seeds a protection against infections. Perhaps because of their glorious blue, the flowers were used to cure eye infections.

The pigment that gives the flower its magnificent colour is cyanin, (hence the flower’s Latin name Centaurea Cyanus) which is used as a blue dye. Strangely, it is the same pigment that makes I-love-you roses so red. This too has a mythological link: it was named after a Greek youth, Cyanus, as a reward from the goddess Flora for dedicating his life to decorating her altar with flowers.

In Russian folklore the flower is named after a handsome young man called Basilek who wandered into a field where a nymph saw him and fell in love with him. She couldn’t marry a mortal, so to keep him with her forever in the cornfield she turned him into a flower as blue as his eyes.

Folklore also attributes magical properties to cornflowers. One recipe recommends sprinkling a powder of ground, dried flowers across the entrances to the house to keep out evil spirits. Another advises that a fresh cornflower placed on the “third eye” between the eyebrows will increase the powers of a medium or fortune-teller, and a spell written in ink coloured with cornflower petals will be super-potent.

A candle made of wax mixed with cornflowers was thought to overcome bad smells, and at a time when infection was believed to be spread by nasty odours, it would be lit in a sickroom.

Like many flowers, especially those that seed copiously, folklore links the cornflower with fertility and plenty - and of course love and sex. Carrying a sachet of dried flowers might attract a lover; more specifically, sprinkling the powder on your right shoe is a sure-fire, babe-magnet.

The ancient Romans had a story for the cornflower too. Sky accused Cornfield of ingratitude for the rain he sent to water the corn and the sun he lavished to ripen it. Cornfield assured Sky that he appreciated and honoured him and he gave Sky the wonderful green of the new-grown shoots and the waving gold of the ripe ears. The colours were so beautiful that in return Sky scattered some of his brilliant blue amongst the corn, and cornflowers grew.