Elizabeth Washington Gamble Wirt (1784–1857), who published under the name E. W. Wirt, was a 19th-century American author whose Flora's Dictionary was the first book to broadly popularize the concept of a language of flowers for American readers.

Floriography is a means of cryptological communication through the use or arrangement of flowers. Meaning has been attributed to flowers for thousands of years, and some form of floriography has been practiced in traditional cultures throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa.