Green flowers are among some of the most unique flowers that are commonly grown in home gardens. While most flowers come in bright colors, the monochromatic coloring of green flowers sets them apart in a bouquet or border.
Below you’ll find a guide to twenty of the most popular and common green flowers you’ll find. Keep reading to learn more about these beautiful blooms and their significance in flower arrangement.
How Do Flowers Get Their Colors?
Flowers get their colors from various pigments known as anthocyanins. These chemicals can produce pigments in flowers that result in colors such as white, blue, purple, red, brown, and black. The color that a flower produces is determined by the DNA of the plant.
The pigments in flowers are designed to either absorb or reflect light, resulting in different colors. Flowers primarily use these pigments to attract pollinators, aiding the flowers in their reproductive cycle.
What Do Green Flowers Mean?
In bouquets, green flowers can symbolize many different meanings. Here are some of the common meanings of adding green flowers in a flower arrangement:
- Birth and renewal
- Youth and vitality
- Good health and fortune
In flower arrangements, green flowers also serve a more practical purpose. Green flowers can act as beautiful filler that adds a green backdrop to brighter colored flowers.
Many green flowers also come in various interesting textures that can help balance and refine a bouquet.
If you’re considering different flower colors for a gift bouquet, consider green flowers for the following life events:
- The birth of a child
- A wedding or engagement
- In support of an ill friend or relative
- Graduation from high school or college
Even if you don’t make green flowers the centerpiece of your bouquet, the symbolism of these emerald beauties can help add significance and vivid color to any flower arrangement.
20 Types of Green Flowers
Light Green Flowers
1. Green Button Chrysanthemums (Asparagus Myriocladus)
Green button chrysanthemums are symbolic of good cheer, hope, and rest. They’re a good flower choice to give someone in recovery.
Mums are low-maintenance plants but removing dead blooms throughout the growing season can encourage the growth of new flowers.
2. Bells-of-Ireland (Moluccella laevis)
Bells of Ireland is a summer flowering annual that is native to Middle Eastern countries like Turkey and Syria. In the language of flowers, Bells-of-Ireland are given as a symbol of good fortune.
Bells of Ireland are deer-resistant, so try planting these flowers in place of hostas or other landscaping plants that deer tend to eat and damage.
3. Green Anthurium (Anthurium andraeanum)
Anthurium is a hardy houseplant that is also known as tailflower, flamingo flower, laceleaf, and painter’s palette. There are more than a thousand species in this family of flowers. Even though the shield-shaped growth in the center of anthurium is often mistaken for a flower, this is a protective leaf that shields the plant’s real blooms at the spadix.
4. Hypericum Berries (Hypericum androsaemum)
A popular addition to flower arrangements for their bushy growth and striking green berries, Hypericum berries are closely related to St. John’s Wort, an herb used to improve both mood and memory.
Hypericum berries require good spacing and circulation in humid climates when grown outdoors.
5. Green Hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla)
Hydrangeas are a highly poisonous shrub that are known for their large sprays of small blooms. These plants can come in green, but are also found with purple, pink, or even blue blooms depending on the pH of the soil they’re grown in.
6. Green Angelica (Angelica atropurpurea)
Angelica is an edible flower that is commonly grown in gardens for teas and herbal medicine. Because these flowers often grow in the same areas as lethally poisonous hemlock, a plant that angelica closely resembles, they should only be foraged in the wild by an experienced field botanist.
7. Greenflower Indian Mallow (Abutilon sandwicense)
Greenflower Indian Mallow is a short-lived perennial shrub known for its large, pendulous green flowers. Indian mallow is listed as critically endangered and is native only to the islands of Hawaii. Since its growing conditions are so strict and it does best at elevation as a mountainside plant, it is almost always found in the wild rather than nursery collections.
Dark Green Flowers
8. Green Rose (Rosa chinesis ‘Viridiflora’)
Green roses are an old heirloom rose cultivar from China that are among the oldest domesticated roses in the world. Rather than the broad pink and coral petals found on many roses, these garden roses feature clusters of spiky green sepals.
Historically, only the ancient emperors of China were allowed to grow this rose.
9. Green Goddess Lily (Zantedeschia aethiopica ‘Green Goddess’)
Green goddess lilies have a white bloom with a tip that looks like it has been dipped in dark green paint. These lilies, also known as calla lilies, are considered toxic.
However, they are very adaptable landscaping plants that do best in cool coastal gardens.
Emerald Green Flowers
10. Green Lady’s Slippers (Paphiopedilum)
Green lady’s slippers are Asian orchids that symbolize capricious beauty. Because of their interesting flower shape, they are commonly featured on postage stamps and other pieces of art.
These orchids should be planted in spaghnum moss. Once they begin to feel dry, the plant needs to be watered once a week. Monthly fertilizer can also help these plants show their best blooms.
11. Stinking Hellebore (Helleborus foetidus)
Stinking hellebore, also known as dungwort or setterwort, is a green flower that gives off a noxious smell when the flowers are crushed or brushed. Despite this unfortunate fragrance, hellebore is a plant that is easy to grow at home and they bloom earlier than almost any other perennial plant.
12. Green Dianthus (Dianthus barbatus)
Green dianthus is one of the most unique flowers you’ll find in a flower arrangement. These fuzzy green pom poms add interest and texture to any bouquet.
Dianthus can last up to fourteen days in a vase and the blooms can last even longer if preserved by drying. Dianthus is grown in full sun and is a colorful addition to landscaping borders.
13. Green Tulips (Tulipa ‘Spring Green’)
Green tulips are relatively rare compared to other tulip colors, but this makes it more eye-catching if you can manage to grow it in your landscaping. Rather than being a pure green flower, green tulips feature a cream or white-colored base with stark emerald green highlights. These tulips are often grown as a neutral backdrop for more colorful blooms.
14. Green Clematis (Clematis ‘Green Passion’)
Clematis is a flowering vine that comes in a wide range of different colors and flower shapes. Green clematis flowers are found in a cultivar known as Green Passion that produces large lime-green flowers against dark green foliage.
This vine does best in full sun, but it also thrives with afternoon shade to help protect its delicate roots from overheating.
Yellow Green Flowers
15. Anastasia Spider Mum (Chrysanthemum x morifolium)
Unlike button mums, spider mums are known for their spiky blooms that resemble a burst of fireworks. They are a popular flower for wedding bouquets and formal flower arrangements.
Spider mums are also a good addition to bouquets meant for sympathy, or to propose an elopement. Most spider mums are white, but the Anastasia cultivar is bright green.
16. Green Star Sword Lily (Gladiolus ‘Green Star’)
Gladiolus is the star of almost any cottage garden it features in, and green gladiolus is no exception to the rule. These tall flower spikes can reach heights of four feet and may need to be staked to keep them from falling over once the heavy blooms start to set.
They are a symbol of strength, moral integrity, faithfulness, and character.
17. Envy Zinnia (Zinnia elegans)
Zinnias are a widespread desert plant that can be found from the American Southwest all the way down into South America. The Envy cultivar of zinnias features fluffy chartreuse blooms with soft, rounded petals.
Green zinnias are an excellent plant to cultivate to draw in butterflies, but you might want to interplant them with colored zinnias for a more enthusiastic showing.
18. Green Daylily (Hemerocallis)
Daylilies are a popular perennial plant that comes in a wild array of colors, including green. Along with their showy bloom displays, every part of the daylily is edible. Edible landscaping like daylilies is a good option for homeowners who have pets and small children who may try to eat them while playing.
19. Green Cockscomb (Celosia ‘Spring Green’)
Green cockscomb, also known as celosia, is a flowering annual that is best known for its unusual folded, velvety petals that resemble a cockscomb or the wrinkles in a human brain. Celosia comes in many shades, but the lime-colored Spring Green cultivar is especially striking against other flowers in a landscaping bed. Celosia is drought-tolerant and grows quickly.
20. Green Flowering Tobacco (Nicotiana alata x mutabilis)
Like many green flowers, green flowering tobacco has fragrant blooms that are geared towards nocturnal pollinators like bats. These lime-green flowers are also a big draw for hummingbirds during the day.
The green blooms of flowering tobacco contrast well with other colored flowers in a landscaping border. However, like all members of the Nicotiana family, these flowers are toxic.
FAQ
Green flowers are rare compared to flowers of other colors because one of the main purposes of most flowers is to differentiate the reproductive anatomy of the plant from the rest of the leaves. This helps attract pollinators like bees and wasps to help the plant develop seeds.
Most of the green flowers found in nurseries are cultivars of a plant that occurs with colored flowers in the wild. By deliberately breeding domestic plant mutations that wouldn’t thrive in the wild, humans have developed green strains of many popular houseplants and flowers.
Night-blooming flowers are more likely to be green or lack color in their flowers. These flowers use nocturnal pollinators like bats that don’t see color and wouldn’t benefit from being attracted by colorful flowers. Instead, many of these flowers have a strong fragrance to attract pollinators.
One of the most common green flowers found in nurseries and landscaping is the green cultivar of the hydrangea bush. While green hydrangeas are covered with sprays of lime green flowers, this flower also comes in shades of purple and blue.
Green roses are associated with abundance, fresh life, and growth. These flowers are a good option for a bouquet gifted to a new expecting mother or anyone who is experiencing a blossoming in their life, such as the beginning of a new business or a wedding engagement.
Green roses are a nice choice for gifting a flower arrangement because their unusual color sets them apart from other bouquet options. Since the color green is associated with money and the bounties of nature, green roses are a good way to instill a sense of cheer and luck in any arrangement.
In the language of flowers, green carnations traditionally symbolize financial wealth and prosperity. In the 1800s, green carnations also took on meaning as a representative flower of the LGBTQ community.
Green carnations first became a symbol of queerness when they were popularized by the popular writer Oscar Wilde. The writer started a trend of wearing green carnation boutonnieres as a way for gay men in his social circles to subtly signal their interest to other gay men.
The green carnation took on special significance to the Decadent literary movement since the unnatural green color of the bloom was seen as a sign of decadence that mirrored the writers themselves.
Green Flowers Conclusion
Green flowers might not be as popular or common as some other flowers that are used in flower arrangements and landscaping. However, these verdant blooms can add beautiful color, contrast, and texture to any bouquet or garden.
