The carnation, Dianthus caryophyllus, is a clove-scented flower long cultivated from a Mediterranean pink; its genus name, Dianthus, means the flower of Zeus or the divine flower, given by Theophrastus. That divine name shaped its standing as a flower of love and fascination in the classical and later European world, and its spicy fragrance made it, in the Middle Ages, a substitute for the costly clove in flavouring wine, whence some of its old names. As a garden flower it became one of the most bred and various of blooms.
The carnation gave its name to an entire modern revolution: Portugal's bloodless overthrow of its authoritarian government on 25 April 1974 is known worldwide as the Carnation Revolution, after the carnations that flower-sellers and civilians placed in the barrels of soldiers' rifles and on their uniforms as the army sided with the uprising, a strikingly literal case of a flower of love and fascination becoming, in a single day, a symbol of peaceful political change. The carnation's durability as a cut flower, capable of lasting weeks rather than days in water, also made it one of the first flowers to be commercially bred and shipped internationally on a large scale, a practical trait behind its ubiquity in modern floristry.