July birth flowers: larkspur and water lily

What is the July birth flower?

The July birth flower is the larkspur, with the water lily as the month's second flower, in the order The Old Farmer's Almanac gives. One is a tall spike of a garden flower; the other floats flat on a pond.

What does the larkspur mean?

The larkspur means lightness and levity, a light heart rather than a heavy one. Those are Kate Greenaway's words in her 1884 Language of Flowers. Henrietta Dumont's American dictionary of 1851 calls it “flights of fancy,” and the Almanac's modern list says an open heart, positivity and love.

Its name is a picture: the back of each flower has a long spur, like the hind claw of a lark. Its relative the delphinium takes its name from the Greek for dolphin, after the shape of the buds, and botanists now place the larkspur in Delphinium too.

Greek myth gives it a sadder story. The Almanac tells how the larkspur grew from the blood of the hero Ajax at Troy, and the markings on its petals were read as the letters of his cry of grief. The species name, ajacis, means “of Ajax.”

What do larkspur colors mean?

Larkspur colors each have a meaning, and here the old and new lists really do differ. So what does purple larkspur symbolize? First love, in the Almanac and most modern lists. To Greenaway in 1884 it meant haughtiness.

Pink is the one color both lists agree on, and it's not a compliment. For a larkspur with a kind message, choose purple, blue or white.

What does the water lily mean?

The water lily means purity of heart. That's Greenaway's phrase, and the Almanac keeps it, adding innocence and rebirth. The rebirth is very old: the water lily opens by day and closes again, and in ancient Egypt it stood for the sun and new life. The so-called blue lotus of Egyptian art is in fact a water lily.

Claude Monet made it the most painted flower in modern art. He grew water lilies in his pond at Giverny and painted them around 250 times; the biggest canvases fill two oval rooms at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris.

It's a national flower twice over: Bangladesh's white water lily and Sri Lanka's blue one. The one in our photo is America's own, the fragrant water lily, native from Newfoundland to Florida and Texas.

Why does July have two birth flowers?

Traditions differ and not every flower grows everywhere, so the Almanac gives most months a primary and a secondary flower. July's two hardly ever meet: the larkspur stands in sunny garden borders, the water lily lies on still water. Between them, anyone near a garden or a pond has a July flower to find.

July birth flower tattoo ideas

July's flowers have opposite shapes, one tall and one round, which gives a tattoo artist a lot to work with.

• A larkspur spike. The tall stem of flowers suits long placements: down the spine, along the forearm or up the side of the calf.
• A water lily from above. Seen from overhead, a water lily is a neat circle of petals on a round pad, good for a shoulder or the back of the hand.
• Monet style. Loose watercolor in pond greens and soft pinks, with the water lily floating, works well as a color piece.
• Purple for first love. Since purple larkspur means first love, it's a sweet choice for a couple, or paired with a partner's birth flower.

When and where do they bloom?

Both flower in summer. The larkspur is native to southern Europe and western Asia and has gone wild in much of the US. The fragrant water lily is North American.

Native ranges come from the World Checklist of Vascular Plants as published by World Flora Online (CC BY 4.0), names and families from Wikidata (CC0), and flowering times from the floras listed under Sources. They describe the wild plant; garden and florist flowers follow their own calendars.

Catch it in PocketPetal

PocketPetal is a plant-collecting game: snap a plant and it's caught, with a name from image recognition and a rarity rolled from Common to Mythic. July has one catch with a bonus.

A catch that comes back as a water lily counts as an aquatic plant, so it can earn Water World, the badge for your first aquatic plant, and toward Pond Hopper, for five different ones. Snap water lilies from the bank, a bridge or a boardwalk, and never lean out over the water. Larkspur is a garden find; look in sunny borders and snap from the path.

In the Northern Hemisphere, July catches count toward Summer Sun. Every roll is luck, the same for every plant. More on rarity, the badges and walk ideas.