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Achillea millefolium — Carmarthenshire, Wales, 2018.

By now, it’s clear that plant lore is often rooted in stories of gallantry and loss. But blooms can help us, too. Consider Achillea millefolium.

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Until recently, Achillea millefolium, or yarrow as it is commonly known, has been relegated to the roadside, but it holds an esteemed place in folk medicine. Part of its name, Achillea, comes from the name of the Greek hero, Achilles, who Chiron the centaur taught of its healing properties. Achilles was a warrior, and Chiron, a scholar of medicine and the stars, anticipated the wounds this warrior would encounter. Among other remedies, he showed Achilles how to apply an ointment of yarrow to stanch bleeding. Years ago, I remember buying a yarrow cream to mend my wounds. This act was a testament to how the stories of humans and plants are intertwined, but also their power to heal in any time. 

Ancient Greeks weren’t the only people to recognize this plant’s potency. Native people of the Americas believed yarrow to be “life medicine.” From treating headaches and fevers to aiding in sleep, yarrow was an integral part of their daily lives. Even in my motherland, the United Kingdom, yarrow plays a visionary role in Gallic lore: a leaf of yarrow across the eye was believed to bestow second sight. 

Far away in space and time, a similar concept exists in China where practitioners of the I Ching have long used dried yarrow stalks in this millennia-old divination ritual. The diviner collects 50 yarrow stalks locally, cleans and lacquers them, and uses them in an intricate process of foretelling a path. Finding local yarrow matters. In Chinese traditional medicine, practitioners believe that the qi (life essence) of the yarrow will be more in-tune with the diviner if collected locally. What seems key to all of this is the relationships humans have cultivated with plants. It’s not that they saw them as saviors, but companions to a better way of living and aid in seeing the world. 

Years after I bought the yarrow ointment, I stayed in a lovingly restored cottage from 1755 in Carmarthenshire, Wales. Carmarthenshire is considered the birthplace of Merlin, the magical sage who added Arthur throughout his travails. The area, and all of Wales for that matter, seemed to brim with a kind of whimsy only a place still rooted in legends could evoke. And where there are rich legends, there is also a fierce appreciation for the natural world. 

A long lane led up to the house, and every evening, I would take in the long light. Summer was close to ending. The earth turned golden. I would miss the blackberries, now green but hinting at the sweetness to come, and this thought disappointed me. Then I saw the yarrow. Now, I do not have a favorite flower or plant, but there are those plants that touch something deep within you. Here was yarrow, which I had seen at this point in various settings around the world, but it was as though I was seeing it for the first time. In the dusk, it seemed as though the most gentle of pinks infused the bloom, a magical talisman aglow from setting sun. 

I cut the stem and took it home. There was no bleeding to staunch that evening but it certainly mended a broken heart. 

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Thank you for reading. If you have any questions or you are curious to know who signed you up for Coucou Postale’s Bloom series, send me a message. I’d love to hear from you.

You are a recipient of Coucou Postale, a postcard series designed to engage and delight readers through stories and art using good-old fashioned mail and the magic of the Internet.

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Anemone — Lopez Island, Washington, 2016.

For some blooms, it is only after seeing them in-person that they express themselves to you. Anemone is one of those flowers.

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Growing up in Florida, anemones were a thing of winsome flower tableaus in magazines. Later on, maybe I saw one tucked into a wedding bouquet or two, but it was in Los Angeles that I had a private audience with a single anemone bloom.

You always remember these first floral encounters. The light was low, that kind Alice of Wonderland called a golden afternoon. The flower seemed to exist without a vase. Certainly, there was one, but all I remember was the soft white of the anemone's petals and its center, velvety black-blue.

This was not a grocery store flower. It was the kind of bloom that made me wonder what other strange beauty Nature had to share. I never did ask my friend where she found the single bloom or who gave it to her. After all, there were more new blooms to see in California. Pomegranate flowers, poppies, salvia, fuschia. I forgot about the anemone.

Then, in 2016, I went to Lopez Island, a tranquil haven off the coast of Washington State. While I stayed on the island, I documented the flora and fauna. I also met local people at the morning Saturday market, including flower farmer, Lindsey Cummins.

Lindsey graciously invited me back to Dancing Flower Farm, the tiny plot of land she had carved out on her family's property, and where she lived in a bus that she and her partner had converted into a cozy home. Until meeting Lindsey, I had only seen one anemone, but I as rounded the gate to enter the garden, I saw a rainbow of them all twisted and curled, flashing their vibrant petals at me. I felt joy.

History suggests flowers and emotions have always been entwined. In Greek myth, the culture from which anemone gets its name, the flower sprung up from the tears of Aphrodite while mourning the loss of her lover, Adonis. There is something hopeful and enduring in this fiction. We continue to act out her gesture in Western culture by offering flowers to people after they lose loved ones. Other fictions abound: There’s an old wive’s tale that suggests that anemones close when it rains, or that it can ward off disease. None speak to me across time the way the story of Aphrodite does though.

Most people associate anemones with spring, but there is also a variety that blooms in autumn: Anemone japonica. Notorious plant explorer Robert Fortune first introduced Anemone japonica to England in 1844 after finding it in Shanghai, where I now call home. I have yet to see the flower in the wilds of the city, but I’ll keep looking. Maybe all that’s needed are tears. — GF

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Thank you for reading. If you have any questions or you are curious to know who signed you up for Coucou Postale’s Bloom series, send me a message. I’d love to hear from you.

You are a recipient of Coucou Postale, a postcard series designed to engage and delight readers through stories and art using good-old fashioned mail and the magic of the Internet.

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Dahlia ‘Café au Lait’ — Newport, Rhode Island, 2015.

Everyone remembers their first dahlia. Mine was a Café au Lait at a farmer’s market in Newport, Rhode Island. Only a month later, I would notice them adorning decorations for Dias de Los Muertos, the Mexican holiday that honors the dead, which is where their story begins. 

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Before Mexico adopted the dahlia as its national flower, they were part of an Aztec myth:


The Earth Goddess Serpent Woman was ordered by the sky gods to impale a flower of Dahlia coccinea on the sharp point of a maguey leaf [agave plant] and to hold both to her heart all night. The next morning she gave birth to Uizilopochti[;] he was god, fully grown, fully armed, and with a thirst for blood from the flowers’ eight blood-red rays.


According to Spanish naturalist and court physician, Francisco Hernández, who was the first to record them in 1570, the Aztecs grew dahlias for animal food and medicine. Its medicinal use was included in the Badianus Manuscript, which was produced in 1552, making it the oldest American herbal. Like Paracelsus’s concept of the doctrine of signature, the Aztecs believed that the dahlia, whose stem resembled a water-pipe, could be used to treat the common “water-pipe” problems of humans. 


By the time the dahlia reached London, hundreds of years later, they were primarily used for food since their tubers were similar to potatoes. It wasn’t even until the 1800s that Europeans began cultivating them into the flowers we know today. Plant lore credits Napoleon Bonaparte’s wife and flower-obsessive, Empress Joséphine, for a dahlia craze that consumed Europe’s gardeners. It all began when she hired Aime Bonpland, a plant collector who brought dahlia tubers or seeds from the New World, to run her gardens. Despite the garden being a bust — Bonpland left no record of developing any dahlias for her — the plant's intrigue grew in popularity and size.    


Today, dahlias, some of which are the size of dinner plates, continue to enchant people, adding a particular old-fashioned charm to gardens and flower arrangements. It’s no wonder the craze for them continues. — GF

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To Ponder

• What was your first memory of a dahlia?

• What do dahlias mean to you?

• Why do you think plants continue to enchant us despite myriad things like perfume and fake plants that attempt to supplant them?

Tell me! Send your responses or just have a think about it.