The Bible mentions roughly a dozen distinct flowers and flowering plants, scattered across poetry, parables, temple design, and ritual law. Some appear by name, others are described poetically with identities that scholars still debate. Here’s what grows in the pages of scripture and why each flower mattered.
Lilies of the Field
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells his listeners to “consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin” (Matthew 6:28-30). The Greek phrase is “krina tou agrou,” but the flower in question almost certainly wasn’t what we’d call a lily today. Most botanists and biblical scholars identify it as the crown anemone (Anemone coronaria), a vivid red wildflower still common across Israel’s hillsides in spring. The Missouri Botanical Garden lists “lilies of the field” as one of the plant’s alternate common names. Jesus used these flowers to illustrate that even Solomon’s royal wardrobe couldn’t match the beauty of something wild and effortless.
The Madonna Lily
The white lily that most people picture when they think of biblical flowers is the Madonna lily (Lilium candidum), a tall plant with large, fragrant, pure white petals and golden anthers. It’s native to the region stretching from Lebanon through Israel, where wild populations still survive at Mount Carmel, Kziv Creek, and the Mount Meiron area. This lily held enormous symbolic weight in ancient Jewish culture. Its image was carved into the design of Solomon’s First Temple and appeared on the branches of the golden menorah. It was stamped onto coins as early as 350 BCE and still appears on the modern Israeli one-shekel coin. The flower’s exceptional whiteness made it a symbol of purity and spirituality across multiple cultures for millennia.
The Rose of Sharon
Song of Solomon 2:1 famously declares, “I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.” Despite the name, this was not a rose. The identity of this flower is one of the Bible’s most debated botanical mysteries. Scholars have proposed it could be a bright red tulip common in the hills of the Sharon plain, possibly the Sharon tulip (Tulipa agenensis). Others suggest a narcissus or even the Madonna lily. The plant North Americans know as “Rose of Sharon,” a shrub hibiscus, originated far outside the ancient Levant and has no connection to the biblical verse.
Saffron Crocus
Saffron appears once in the Old Testament, in Song of Solomon 4:14, listed alongside other luxurious aromatics like spikenard, cinnamon, frankincense, myrrh, and aloes. The spice comes from the dried stigmas of the crocus flower (Crocus sativus), and it had been cultivated across Persia and other parts of Asia since ancient times. In the classical world, saffron was extravagantly valued. The Roman writer Pliny described theater benches being strewn with it, and wealthy hosts poured saffron-scented tinctures into small fountains to perfume entire rooms. Guests’ food, decorations, and even furniture were dusted with it. Its inclusion in the Song of Solomon’s catalog of precious substances signals just how costly and desirable it was.
Henna Blossoms
The Song of Solomon mentions henna flowers twice (1:14 and 4:13), with the poet declaring, “My beloved is to me a cluster of henna blossoms in the vineyards of En Gedi.” Henna (Lawsonia inermis) is a large shrub that can grow two to seven meters tall and produces abundant clusters of white, yellow, orange, or pink fragrant flowers in late spring. After the plant matures in its third year, its leaves contain a reddish-orange dye molecule that bonds strongly to proteins, making it useful for coloring skin, hair, nails, leather, and fabric. This is the same plant still used for henna body art today. In the biblical context, henna’s rich fragrance and the protective symbolism of its dye made it a fitting image for a beloved.
Mandrakes
Mandrakes show up in two memorable passages. In Genesis 30:14-16, Rachel trades a night with their shared husband Jacob in exchange for mandrake plants that Reuben found during wheat harvest. The plant was widely believed in the ancient world to promote fertility, and the story’s tension revolves entirely around that reputation. Mandrakes reappear in Song of Solomon 7:13: “The mandrakes send out their fragrance, and at our door is every delicacy.” The mandrake (Mandragora officinarum) produces small purple flowers and yellow, fragrant fruit. Its forked root, which can resemble a human figure, fed centuries of folklore about its supposed magical properties.
Almond Blossoms
The almond tree is one of the first trees to bloom in Israel, often flowering while winter is still hanging on. Its Hebrew name, “shaked,” also means “watchful,” connecting the tree to the idea of God’s vigilant protection. This wordplay appears directly in Jeremiah 1:11-12, where God uses the almond branch as a visual pun to promise he is “watching” over his word. But the almond blossom’s most detailed appearance is in Exodus 25:33-34, where God instructs Moses on the design of the golden menorah for the Tabernacle. Each of the menorah’s six branches was to have three cups “shaped like almond blossoms, each with calyx and petals.” Research at Neot Kedumim, Israel’s Biblical Landscape Reserve, has confirmed that the menorah’s entire design incorporates the botanical structure of the almond tree, linking the temple’s central light source to a flower that symbolized hope, divine light, and the watchful return of spring.
Myrtle
Myrtle (Myrtus communis) is a fragrant evergreen shrub with small white flowers, native to the eastern Mediterranean. It appears in several prophetic books, most notably in Zechariah 1:8-11, where an angel stands among myrtle trees in a vision. The prophet Isaiah (41:19 and 55:13) uses the myrtle as a sign of God transforming wasteland into beauty. Myrtle also plays a practical ritual role. Leviticus 23:40 commands the use of “boughs of thick trees” during the festival of Sukkot, and commentaries dating to the first century CE identified these as myrtle branches. To this day, myrtle is one of the four species bound together and waved during the week-long harvest festival. Archaeological work has backed up this long history: fossilized pollen from ancient garden pools dating to the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, studied by Tel Aviv University researcher Dafna Langgut, confirmed that myrtle was cultivated in the region alongside other ornamental and fruit-bearing plants.
Other Flowers in Scripture
Several other flowering plants make briefer appearances. Calamus, an aromatic reed, is listed as an ingredient in the holy anointing oil in Exodus 30:23. The “bramble” or thorny bush that catches fire in Moses’ encounter at the burning bush (Exodus 3:2) has been variously identified, with some scholars proposing a species of thorny acacia that produces small yellow flower clusters. Wormwood, a bitter flowering herb, appears repeatedly as a metaphor for bitterness and judgment, particularly in Revelation 8:11 and Lamentations 3:15. And the “flowers of the field” that wither in Isaiah 40:6-8 are used as a sweeping metaphor for human mortality, contrasting the brief life of wildflowers with the permanence of God’s word.
Many of these identifications carry some uncertainty. Biblical Hebrew and Greek used broad terms for plants, and translators across centuries have mapped those words onto different species depending on what grew in their own landscapes. What’s consistent is the role flowers play in scripture: they mark beauty, fragility, wealth, devotion, and the cycles of a land where agriculture and faith were inseparable.