Gardens > Plants > Gladiolus

Glorious gaudy glads!

Mention gladioli and what springs to mind? Well if you’re of a certain age, Dame Edna Everage might fight her way into your psyche with her infamous glads – her trademark flower. Slightly younger and Morrissey probably crops up – who’d have thought The Smiths would have rocketed the showy glad into popular culture circles? But manage it Morrissey did.

Gladiolus – its proper name – is the official flower of August (along with the Poppy but we’ll leave that one for another time!). Derived from the Latin gladius meaning ‘sword’ based on the shape of its leaves, gladiolus is a perennial flower that is reasonably hardy in temperate climates.

Because of their height – they grow anything from 24–60 inches – they make a good cut flower so throughout their flowering season you could be plying your girlfriend with glads, something that she might not appreciate at first, but point out to her that the gaudy glad signifies to the receiver that she ‘pierces the heart’ of the giver, and you just might be onto a winner with them! If that doesn’t work you could always rustle up some gladiolus corms (bulbs to you and I) which apparently taste like chestnuts when roasted!

Gladiolus corms have a history of medicinal uses too. Whipped up into a poultice they have been used in the past to draw out splinters and thorns. In their powdered form and mixed with goat’s milk they have been known to soothe the symptoms of colic.

All in all an adaptable flower! Some more interesting – if predominantly useless – information about glads:

• The glad is a genus of the flowering plants of the iris family
• Another (old) common name for the glad is sword lily
• If you are planting glads they apparently like a pH of 6.2-6.5
• They thrive in full sun
• They require good drainage
• They manage to grow well in a wide variety of soil types
• Gladiolus – in flower language terms – means ‘Splendid Beauty’
• It also has been known to signify remembrance
• It expresses ‘infatuation’
• The ancient name for gladiolus was ‘xiphium’ from the Greek word ‘xiphus’ (also meaning sword)
• The gladioli is representative of the Roman gladiator
• Glads do not like to compete – make sure you keep the weeds down around them!
• If you are a Virgo apparently you will love gladioli!
• If you put pure white gladioli into a vase filled with water that has been coloured with food colouring, the colour of the water will seep into the flower buds!