I write this with my favorite vase (white) sitting in front of me.  It contains white mums (on green stems).  Often it contains daisies or white tulips or alstroemeria.

Even the impatiens in the planters outside my front door in summer are white.  It’s not that I don’t appreciate other flowers (or vases).  I just have this preference.  Maybe I like green and white because they were the colors of both my high school and my summer camp? 

Anyhow, flowers, in general, just make me smile.  Do I associate them with good events in my life like birthdays or Mother’s Day or dinner parties?  It doesn’t matter what the occasion is; often I buy them myself.  And I love to buy flowers for others.  So what’s this all about?

Turns out that this is a topic that has been considered by academics at Rutgers University.  According to a bunch of co-authors of a paper called “An Environmental Approach to Positive Emotion: Flowers” which was published in Evolutionary Psychology in 2005, the authors did three different studies that indicated that flowers are a powerful positive emotion ‘inducer’. ” The study I liked the best showed that flowers presented to elderly participants (55+ age) elicited positive mood reports and improved episodic memory.”

Great news for florists everywhere.