Appreciation of flowers

The Phactor was thinking how it’s rather a nice thing to like flowers, and how apparently this is not so new. This came to mind when I found some nice concrete examples of floral imagery, as illustrated by this bas relief from Central Park NYC. The second image is from the archeological ruins of Troy. Other than the wear and tear of millennia, they are quite similar, and I quite doubt that any bits of NYC will look so good so many years after getting sacked by the Greeks. (New Yorkers: Be careful what gifts you accept.)

We humans so love the way flowers look that we decorate our properties, celebrate special events, declare our affections with flowers, and decorate with them at births, marriages, and deaths. Our connection to flowers is so ingrained in our psyche that the failure to appreciate their aesthetics is a sign of clinical depression. (Oh, dear what if you don't like this?) Apparently the human appreciation of flowers is nothing new. Pollen from bundles of flowers found in Neanderthal graves shows that honoring people in death has not changed very much over the past 150,000 years.


So what kinds of flowers are they? Any ideas?