Yes GREAT question!
Are they different than 'ordinary flowers' or 'natives' or even 'exotics'
and what does the term mean!?
There is a very good reason I call my work WILDflowers and not JUST Flowers.
My Decks, the ones I have created and am working on now are not the Australian FLOWER Deck
or the Avalon FLOWER Deck etc but WILDFLOWER decks.
The Talismans I create, the meditations I have used with you in workshops, the essences I make, anything at all are all WILDflowers. Not Native, not Exotic, not just Flowers even.
Ok so the term sounds pretty good, I admit. "Wild" conjures up lots of images for me and I'm sure for you too.... freedom, unrestrained activity, even rest ~ to do what you want at any time, joy, magick.......and I could fill this page really couldn't I?
Wildflowers are an actual term for a group of flowers. It's one of those terms that is not really 'official' and gets debated hotly around the traps but I find it fits the sense of what I am doing with my work perfectly!
I use this term because my work is completely aligned with what it refers to ~
A Wildflower of an area is any flower
which grows without human assistance in that area.
The term for most INCLUDES Native/Indigenous Flowers (these have grow naturally in the area ) AND those introduced by humans. I use the term as such (including both) as I work with what is flourishing, thriving, connected with the land I am aligning with while creating .
I would most certainly add that for the purpose of magickal, spiritual and healing modality workings, it would a plant which connected in some way to flourish in an aspect that proved its
connection with the land.
I DO need to know which ARE indigenous plants and which are introduced as well but I do need to know if they are connected. That they work here in this land, this area, because in this there is great magick, healing notes and understands to be learned from such introduced flowers.
Some Flowers haven't fared so well and at times they have required a bit of help and I guess this is how we come to debate the topic. In my heart I find that such flowers which have become so entwined with the magick of place deserve inclusion and have become somehow Wildflowers for a time against the odds because they had work to do with the land, time and space.
So I do not use the term Wildflowers lightly.
I have considered every aspect of this flower when including it in a body of work and creating a tool such as an Oracle Deck or a Talisman. I work with Wildflowers because they work with the energies I am seeking to include right now.
A PEFECT example which really tests the concept of Wildflowers
is the Holy Thorn or Glastonbury Thorn.
I don't think any other flower immediately springs to mind above this magikal flower when one starts to think of Avalon, of Glasonbury and yet Crataegus monogyna is not 'native' to this area. It was introduced in a very magikal way when Joseph of Arimathea visited Glastonbury and thrust his staff into Wearyall Hill, which then grew into the original thorn tree at Glastonbury .
Did it flourish? Well for a time and I have included it with my
Avalon Wildflowers as it had it's time and sacred space within the workings of Avalon.
The most validating reason I found to include The Holy Thorn was that it connected with
the land, not in it's ability to flourish but that it flowered TWICE a year.
The ONLY one of its kind to do so, once in late Spring as is usual and the other time
just after midwinter and this was always JUST after the harshest period.
Wildflower energy is such a deep, connected and nature~strong magick and the spiritual and healing work that you can find are incredibly blessed. Have a look at want you may find on your Wildflower travels. It is so interesting to see what you may even connect deeply as being 'of a place' to find that in fact it is not. One Australian Wildflower I can think of right now is the very beloved Protea. She is not at all an Australian Native, but how perfectly does she work with our land and with all of us?
Wildflowers are born everyday.... flourish where YOU are planted Wildflower because YOU have work to do here too and what you have to share is valid, it is worthy and the Earth wants you to connect..........