section_path: Human use
section_name: Human use
paragraph_text: Human use
  
  History shows that flowers have been used by humans for thousands of years, to serve a variety of purposes. An early example of this is from about 4,500 years ago in Ancient Egypt, where flowers would be used to decorate women's hair. Flowers have also inspired art time and time again, such as in Monet's Water Lilies or William Wordsworth's poem about daffodils entitled: " I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud ".
  
  In modern times, people have sought ways to cultivate, buy, wear, or otherwise be around flowers and blooming plants, partly because of their agreeable appearance and smell. Around the world, people use flowers to mark important events in their lives:
  
  Flowers like jasmine have been used as a replacement for traditional tea in China for centuries. Most recently many other herbs and flowers used traditionally across the world are gaining importance to preapare a range of floral tea.
  
  People therefore grow flowers around their homes, dedicate parts of their living space to flower gardens, pick wildflowers, or buy commercially-grown flowers from florists. Flower production and trade supports developing economies through their availability as a fair trade product.
  
  Flowers provide less food than other major plant parts (seeds, fruits, roots, stems and leaves), but still provide several important vegetables and spices. Flower vegetables include broccoli, cauliflower and artichoke. The most expensive spice, saffron, consists of dried stigmas of a crocus. Other flower spices are cloves and capers. Hops flowers are used to flavor beer. Marigold flowers are fed to chickens to give their egg yolks a golden yellow color, which consumers find more desirable; dried and ground marigold flowers are also used as a spice and coloring agent in Georgian cuisine. Flowers of the dandelion and elder are often made into wine. Bee pollen, pollen collected from bees, is considered a health food by some people. Honey consists of bee-processed flower nectar and is often named for the type of flower, e.g. orange blossom honey, clover honey and tupelo honey.
  
  Hundreds of fresh flowers are edible, but only few are widely marketed as food. They are often added to salads as garnishes. Squash blossoms are dipped in breadcrumbs and fried. Some edible flowers include nasturtium, chrysanthemum, carnation, cattail, Japanese honeysuckle, chicory, cornflower, canna, and sunflower. Edible flowers such as daisy, rose, and violet are sometimes candied.
  
  Flowers such as chrysanthemum, rose, jasmine, Japanese honeysuckle, and chamomile, chosen for their fragrance and medicinal properties, are used as tisanes, either mixed with tea or on their own.
  
  Flowers have been used since prehistoric times in funeral rituals: traces of pollen have been found on a woman's tomb in the El Miron Cave in Spain. Many cultures draw a connection between flowers and life and death, and because of their seasonal return flowers also suggest rebirth, which may explain why many people place flowers upon graves. The ancient Greeks, as recorded in Euripides 's play The Phoenician Women, placed a crown of flowers on the head of the deceased; they also covered tombs with wreaths and flower petals. Flowers were widely used in ancient Egyptian burials, and the Mexicans to this day use flowers prominently in their Day of the Dead celebrations in the same way that their Aztec ancestors did.