What it doesn't mean
The friendship reading is modern. In Greenaway's 1884 list the yellow rose means 'decrease of love', with jealousy alongside it.
Only if both people read Victorian flower books. Most people today read yellow roses as cheerful and friendly, and the old meanings were never one fixed code anyway.
What it really means
The yellow rose is the best example of how much flower meanings move. Walk into a florist today and a yellow rose will be sold as the friendship rose: bright, warm, safe to give to someone you are not in love with. Open a Victorian flower book and it says something far less kind.
Kate Greenaway's Language of Flowers, published in 1884 and now free on Project Gutenberg, gives "Rose, Yellow" as "Decrease of love", followed by jealousy. (The Gutenberg text prints that second word as "Jealously", which looks like a slip for "jealousy".) A yellow rose, in that reading, was not something you sent to a friend. It was what you sent when love was cooling.
How did the same flower swap meanings? Partly because there was never a single code. The historian Beverly Seaton, in The Language of Flowers: A History, shows that the floral dictionaries disagreed with each other, differed between France, Britain and America; the Chicago History Museum adds that many meanings were pulled from poetry or a plant's medicinal uses. A 2025 post from the American Antiquarian Society, drawing on her book, puts it simply: the meanings are rarely consistent across texts. Once the fashion faded, later writers were free to give yellow a happier meaning, and friendship is the one that stuck.
So if you are worried that yellow roses send the wrong signal: almost nobody reads them the Victorian way now. The interesting part is that, once, they did.
Where it comes from
Latin — rose
The flower's name is the ordinary 'rose'; it is the colour that carries the message.
- 1819
Charlotte de la Tour's Le Langage des Fleurs, usually counted as the first floral dictionary, starts the fashion for giving each flower a meaning.
- 1884
Greenaway's Language of Flowers lists 'Rose, Yellow' as 'Decrease of love' together with jealousy.
- Today
Modern lists usually give the yellow rose as friendship or platonic affection, the reverse of its old jealous reading.
In real life
- She chose yellow roses for her oldest friend's birthday, so there could be no mistaking them for a love note.
- A Victorian reading the old books would have taken the same bunch as a sign that his love was cooling.
- The florist's card said 'friendship'; Greenaway's 1884 list says 'decrease of love'. Both are describing the same flower.
Questions
Q01What does a yellow rose mean?
Today it usually means friendship or warm affection without romance. In the Victorian language of flowers it meant the opposite: Greenaway's 1884 list gives 'decrease of love' and jealousy.
Q02Do yellow roses mean jealousy?
They did in some Victorian flower books. Kate Greenaway's Language of Flowers (1884) lists 'Rose, Yellow' as 'Decrease of love' with jealousy; the Project Gutenberg text prints the second word as 'Jealously'. Modern lists have mostly dropped that meaning.
Q03Is it OK to give yellow roses?
Yes. Most people read them as cheerful and friendly. The jealous meaning belongs to old flower books that never agreed on one code in the first place.
Q04Why did flower meanings change?
There was never one fixed system to change from. The historian Beverly Seaton shows that the meanings differed from book to book and country to country, so later writers felt free to choose or invent new ones.
Sources
- Kate Greenaway (illustrator), Language of Flowers (Routledge, 1884) — Project Gutenberg.
- Language of Flowers, illustrated by Kate Greenaway, [1884] — The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- Beverly Seaton, The Language of Flowers: A History — University of Virginia Press.
- The Language of Flowers: A Victorian Fascination — Past is Present, American Antiquarian Society.
- Rose symbolism — Wikipedia.
- Speaking the Language of Flowers (With a Chicago Accent) — Chicago History Museum.