The Bleuet de France is the symbol of remembrance and solidarity in France, honoring veterans, war victims, widows, and orphans.
In the language of flowers, the cornflower symbolizes delicacy and shyness and is considered “the messenger of all pure, naive, or delicate feelings”.
The cornflowers — along with poppies — continued to grow in the soil churned by the thousands of shells that daily plowed the battlefields during the Great War. These flowers were the only testament to life that went on and the only splash of color in the mud of the trenches.
On September 15, 1920, Louis Fontenaille, president of the Mutilés de France, presented a report to the Interallied Federation of Veterans (FIDAC) in Brussels. The report proposed a project aiming to make the Bleuet de France the enduring symbolic flower of those who “died for France”.
Starting in 1935, the state officially recognized the sale of the Bleuet de France every November 11th throughout France.
For the first time since 1922, November 11, 2012, no longer solemnly marked only the celebration of the end of the First World War. Instead, it became a day of tribute to all those who died for France.
