We are talking about the "loving a hyacinth" scene over at NA, and some wondered if JA wasn't employing "the language of flowers" in this scene. Here's a bit of KateL's post:

For the later Victorians anyway, there were entire books devoted to the "Language of Flowers" and among the many meanings of hyacinths were "constancy" and "unobtrusive loveliness". Both of which Eleanor's friendship, in contrast to IT's, have been teaching Catherine to value properly. I can certainly see Catherine taking the hint when Henry suggests he'd like to teach her more about the meaning of a rose...

Another person mentioned that the practice had been around in Shakespeare's time (Ophelia's "Here's rosemary, that's for remembrance") but would this have been widely known and used is Regency times? Or is more Victorian, like "the language of the fan"?