Birth flower
Cosmos
Cosmos bipinnatus. In the language of flowers, as lists print it today, it stands for order, though no nineteenth-century flower dictionary lists the cosmos at all. It is a custom of sentiment, not a scientific or official designation.
- Latin name
- Cosmos bipinnatus
- Month
- October
- Meaning today
- orderA modern reading; no nineteenth-century dictionary lists this flower.
The plant itself
| Family | Asteraceae |
|---|---|
| Native to | Mexico |
| Habit | annual |
| Height | 0.9–1.8 m, occasionally to 2.5 m |
| Flowers | June until the first frost |
In South Africa it was introduced, by the usual account, in contaminated horse feed brought in during the Anglo-Boer War.
Where the names come from
The name was given by the Spanish botanist Antonio José Cavanilles, who described the plant in 1791, from the Greek kosmos. Accounts differ on why: one dictionary takes kosmos in its sense of decoration or ornament, for the plant's elegant leaves, and others point to the orderly arrangement of the flower head. The ornament sense is an old one: besides order and the universe, kosmos was used for the ornaments of a woman's dress. The species name, bipinnatus, is botanical Latin for bipinnate: pinnate, with leaflets that are pinnate themselves.
Where the meaning is written down
No historical dictionary gives this flower a meaning at all. It is absent from Latour's Le langage des fleurs, Shoberl (1836), Tyas (1842), Dumont (1851), Ingram's Flora Symbolica (1869) and Greenaway (1884), the whole standard run of dictionaries. The meaning printed today, “order”, has no earlier source we could find.
Is it poisonous?
No authority has published a finding either way: it is not in the ASPCA's database and carries no Royal Horticultural Society harm rating. That is an absence of evidence, not a clean bill of health.
This is general information and not veterinary advice — if an animal or a person has eaten part of a plant, ring a vet or a poison line rather than reading a website.