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"What a strange thing! to be alive beneath cherry blossoms" wrote the Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa. Aristotle quotes the musician Stratonicos as saying: while a meal “smells delicious”, a fragrant flower “smells beautiful.” Maurice Maeterlinck, in 1907, ascribes intelligence to flowers. Why do flowers cause positive emotions? What is their relationship to memories? In this First-Year Seminar, we'll consider flowers in an interdisciplinary perspective, including literature, art history, aesthetics, and even ethics, including Ovid's Narcissus, the rose of Sharon in the Song of Solomon, Emily Dickinson's gardens, Marcel Proust's hawthorn-blossoms, and Zuzanna Ginczanka’s “girls like pasqueflowers”. Topics will range from beauty to synesthesia, metaphor to metamorphosis. A foray into music (Felix Mendelssohn and Gustav Mahler) may be included. Additionally, visits to the Cylburn Arboretum, Rawlings Conservatory and Botanic Gardens, the Walters or the BMA will enrich our FYS. We'll drink passionflower and linden flower teas and we'll eat orchids!