May Birth Flowers: Lily of the Valley & Hawthorn Meanings
Here’s a weird little fact to open with: one of May’s two birth flowers can genuinely poison you, while the other one used to be brewed into tea for heart trouble. Same month, same birth flower pairing, and yet those two blooms couldn’t be more different if they tried.
That’s lily of the valley and hawthorn, and if you were born in May, they’re both yours. Let’s get into what may birth flowers actually mean, why there are two so wildly different from each other, and what you need to know before you go planting one of them in your yard.
What Are May’s Birth Flowers?
May has two official birth flowers: lily of the valley, the primary one, and hawthorn, the secondary one. If you’ve searched birth flowers of May or what the birth flowers for May are, this is the short answer. But these two deserve more than a short answer, honestly, because their stories go in completely different directions.
Lily of the valley is small, delicate, and sweet-smelling. Hawthorn is a thorny shrub that produces berries in the fall. Not exactly two peas in a pod. But both bloom right around May, and both carry centuries of folklore behind them.
Lily of the Valley — The Primary May Birth Flower
Meaning & Symbolism
Lily of the valley stands for purity, humility, and the return of happiness. Its tiny white bell-shaped blooms hang along a single stem, almost like a string of miniature lanterns, and that delicate look is a big part of why it’s tied to sweetness and modesty.
It’s also known by a few older names worth mentioning: Our Lady’s Tears and May Bells, among them. The “Our Lady’s Tears” name comes from Christian tradition, where the flower’s small white bells were said to represent the Virgin Mary’s tears at the crucifixion.
History & Folklore
Despite the name, lily of the valley isn’t actually a lily. It belongs to the asparagus family, which honestly surprises most people the first time they hear it. In French tradition, giving someone a sprig of lily of the valley on May 1st is supposed to bring good luck for the rest of the year, a custom that’s stuck around since at least the 16th century and is still practiced today.
There’s also a Christian legend involving Saint Leonard, who supposedly fought a dragon in a forest, and everywhere his blood touched the ground, lily of the valley sprang up. Origin stories for flowers get dramatic sometimes, and this one’s no exception.
Is Lily of the Valley Toxic? (Safety Note)
Here’s the part that doesn’t get mentioned enough on other sites, and it really should. Every single part of the lily of the valley plant is toxic if ingested by people, cats, dogs, and horses alike. It contains compounds that affect the heart, and even the water in a vase holding cut lily of the valley stems can become mildly toxic.
So if you’re growing it, keep it away from areas where kids or pets tend to snack on things they shouldn’t. And if you’re using it in a bouquet for someone with small children or curious pets at home, it’s worth mentioning so they can keep it out of reach.
Personality Traits of Lily of the Valley-Born People
People connected to lily of the valley are often described as gentle, sincere, and quietly dependable. Not the loudest person in the room, but usually the one you’d trust with something important. Fitting for a flower that looks fragile but has actually survived in gardens for centuries.
Hawthorn — The Secondary May Birth Flower
Meaning & Symbolism
Hawthorn represents hope, protection, and love, sometimes specifically the kind of hope tied to new beginnings. It’s a member of the rose family, related to apples, pears, and cherries if you can believe that, and it produces clusters of white or pink blossoms in spring followed by small red berries called haws in the fall.
The protection symbolism comes straight from the plant itself. Hawthorn shrubs are covered in thorns, and for centuries people planted them around homes and fields specifically to keep unwanted visitors, human or otherwise, at bay.
History, Folklore & the Celtic Birth Tree
Hawthorn shows up constantly in old European folklore, and not always in a good way. In parts of Britain and Ireland, cutting down a hawthorn tree was considered seriously bad luck, sometimes even believed to invite illness or misfortune into your home. On the flip side, a hawthorn in full bloom was seen as the true unofficial start of summer in the countryside.
In the Celtic tree calendar, hawthorn is actually recognized as May’s birth tree, not just a birth flower, which gives it a bit more standing than most secondary birth flowers get in other months. Medieval folk medicine also used hawthorn for heart health, brewing it into teas and tinctures, a practice that some herbalists still reference today.
Personality Traits of Hawthorn-Born People
If hawthorn feels like your flower, you’re probably someone who comes across tougher on the outside but genuinely cares about protecting the people close to you. A little guarded at first, maybe, but loyal once someone earns your trust. All those thorns are doing a job, after all.
May Zodiac Signs: Taurus & Gemini
May covers two zodiac signs. Born before roughly May 20th, you’re a Taurus. After that, you’re a Gemini.
Taurus tends to be grounded, patient, and values stability. Gemini is curious, quick-witted, and usually juggling more than one interest at once.
How the Zodiac Connects to May’s Flowers
Taurus lines up nicely with lily of the valley’s quiet, steady sweetness; both take their time and don’t rush to impress anyone. Gemini feels closer to hawthorn’s dual nature, protective yet hopeful, thorny yet blooming, which mirrors how Geminis often show two different sides of themselves depending on the day.
Fun pattern to notice, even if you’re not big into astrology. May’s flowers, sign, and stone all seem to agree on the same underlying themes without much coordination required.
May Birthstone: Emerald
May’s birthstone is the emerald, a green variety of the mineral beryl. The word “emerald” traces back through Old French and ultimately to a Greek word meaning green gem, which is about as straightforward a name as birthstones get.
Emeralds have stood for renewal, growth, and wisdom for thousands of years. Cleopatra was famously obsessed with them, reportedly claiming entire emerald mines in Egypt for her own collection.
How Emerald Complements Lily of the Valley & Hawthorn
Emerald’s deep green color mirrors the lush, new growth that lily of the valley and hawthorn both bloom into every spring. And its long-standing symbolism of renewal fits particularly well with hawthorn’s meaning of hope and fresh starts. Three different traditions, one shared spring theme.
May Birth Flower Tattoo Ideas
May birth flower tattoos have grown in popularity, partly because both flowers offer such different visual styles to choose from.
Lily of the Valley Tattoo Designs
Fine-line lily of the valley tattoos are the most requested style, usually placed on the wrist, forearm, or behind the ear. The bell-shaped blooms look great in a simple, delicate line drawing, since the natural shape already does most of the visual work for you. A single drooping stem with three or four bells is a common, understated choice.
Hawthorn Tattoo Designs
Hawthorn tattoos tend to be a little bolder, often including the thorny branch alongside the blossoms or berries for extra texture and contrast. Some people choose to show the plant across different seasons in one design, blossoms on one side, red berries on the other, to represent the full year rather than just spring.
Combining Both Flowers in One Design
Since May technically has two birth flowers, plenty of people combine lily of the valley and hawthorn into a single tattoo, often as intertwining stems or a small mixed arrangement. It’s a nice way to capture both the delicate and tougher sides of the month in one piece.
Simple May Birth Flower Drawing Ideas
If tattoos aren’t your thing, sketching is a good way to get to know your birth flower without any long-term commitment.
Lily of the valley is a great beginner subject. Start with a slightly curved stem, then add small oval bells hanging along one side, slightly overlapping each other near the bottom. Keep the bells uneven in size, since real ones taper as they go up the stem, and that small detail makes a big difference in how natural the drawing looks.
Hawthorn is more of an intermediate challenge because of the thorns and berry clusters. Sketch the branch first, then add small five-petaled blossoms in loose clusters, followed by tiny round berries if you want to include the fall version of the plant. A reference photo helps a lot here, since hawthorn’s blossom clusters aren’t as uniform or symmetrical as people usually assume.
How to Grow Lily of the Valley & Hawthorn
Both plants are fairly easy to grow, though they want pretty different conditions from each other.
Planting, Sunlight & Care Tips
Lily of the valley loves shade, or at most partial sun, and rich, moist soil. It spreads aggressively once it’s established, which is great if you want a thick, low-maintenance ground cover, but keep that in mind if you’re planting it near other flower beds. It will take over more space than you expect within a couple of seasons.
Hawthorn prefers full sun and well-drained soil, and it’s genuinely low-maintenance once established. It handles poor soil and drought better than a lot of flowering shrubs, which is part of why it’s survived so well in hedgerows across Europe for centuries without anyone babying it.
One common mistake with lily of the valley: planting it somewhere with pets or young kids who might handle plants without knowing better. Given the toxicity we already covered, a shaded corner away from high-traffic areas is usually the safer call.
Fun Facts About May’s Birth Flowers
Christian Dior loved lily of the valley so much that he considered it his personal lucky charm, and he sewed sprigs of it into the hems of his early dresses. The flower still appears in Dior’s perfumes today.
Hawthorn berries, called haws, are edible and often turned into jellies, syrups, and even wine. They’re tart on their own but mellow out nicely once cooked down with sugar.
May was historically considered an unlucky month to get married in parts of Britain, with an old saying warning, “marry in May, and you’ll rue the day.” Nobody’s entirely sure where that superstition started, but it stuck around for centuries anyway.
Delicate and Tough, All in One Month
Lily of the valley and hawthorn couldn’t look more different standing next to each other, but that’s kind of what makes May’s birth flowers interesting. One’s soft and a little dangerous if you’re not careful. The other’s thorny on the outside but represents hope and protection underneath. Together, they say more about the month than either one could alone.
Curious what your own birth flower is, or checking one for a friend born in a different month? Head over to the birth flower finder tool on our homepage. Just enter a birthday and it’ll show you the flower, zodiac sign, and birthstone all at once.
