Carnation, The First Mother's Day Flower by Carol King

Photo Colorado State University

Carnations were the very first Mother’s Day flower given when Anna Jarvis, Mother’s Day founder, distributed her mother’s favorite flowers, white carnations in 1907, during the first Mother’s Day memorial service.

"The Carnation Gold Rush" is a term used by Denver locals, historians and preservationists to represent the period between the 1880s and 1930s when the floriculture industry developed and thrived in Colorado.  Denver was once called The Carnation Capitol of the World, there were so many grown here!

Here are some interesting links about the carnation connection to Colorado history:

http://lib.colostate.edu/archives/agriculture/carnations/timeline.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnation_Gold_Rush

http://hortscans.ces.ncsu.edu/library/floriculture/doc_id/1804/-Frontiers-in-Florticulture--Mexico-and-Central-America.pdf

Carnations are members of the dianthus family and there are several hardy periennal varieties that work well in Colorado. They also called “pinks” from the Latin word pinct, which means pinked or scalloped, referring to the jagged edges of the flower petals. Here is a fact sheet on growing the “Darling Dianthus.”

http://extension.colostate.edu/topic-areas/yard-garden/gardening-articles-tips-and-questions-answers-2/gardening-articles/darling-dianthus/

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. ~Marcel Proust

Happy Mother’s Day!