I received the most beautiful book for my birthday from Soraya, the wife of the Dutch ambassador: The Hidden Histories of Flowers by Maddie and Alice Bailey. Besides being a beautiful book to look at, it is filled with exactly the kind of stories I love.

It explores flowers through their origins, Latin names, fairy tales, mythology, symbolism and the relationships different countries and cultures have with them. There are quotes, wonderful illustrations and fascinating little pieces of history throughout. It is the kind of book you can open anywhere and immediately discover something you didn’t know.

And then, of course, I found the dandelion.

The dandelion has been Nala’s logo for the past five or six years. It came to us after a trip I made to Bangkok, and since then this little flower has become very much part of our identity. According to the book, dandelions have been around for some 30 million years, which means, technically, our logo is 30 million years old.

Dandelions have appeared in ancient Egyptian, Roman, Arabic and Anglo-Saxon texts, and have a long history as a medicinal plant, used by cultures across the world to treat all sorts of ailments. But there is even more to this little flower. Its stems and leaves contain a milky latex, and it has also been used to create natural dyes, with yellow coming from the flowers and purple tones from the leaves.

And then there is the question of what a dandelion actually is. Is it an invasive weed, an unwanted intruder that appears where it wasn’t invited? Or is it a beautiful wildflower that simply has an extraordinary ability to grow almost anywhere?

Perhaps that is exactly why I love it so much. The more you discover about the dandelion, the more remarkable it becomes. Resilient, useful, beautiful, ancient and almost impossible to contain. Its seeds travel with the wind, find somewhere new to land and start all over again.

The Hidden Histories of Flowers is beautifully illustrated, full of wonderful stories and a fantastic source of inspiration. I absolutely love it and can highly recommend it, both as a book to keep and as a beautiful gift.