Knowing which flowers are more attractive to humans than others is important for many areas of people-plant interaction research. The perceived beauty of flowers might for example influence the psychological benefits they provide to humans.
It is thus reasonable to ask if people find some flowers more beautiful than others. Although there are some theoretical works concerning preferred flower traits, empirical evidence is largelymissing.
In this study, we used an online survey in which residents of the Czech Republic (n = 2013) rated the perceived beauty of 52 flower stimuli of diverse shapes and colors. Colored flowers were preferred over their uncolored versions.
When controlling for flower shape, we found an unequal preference for different flower colors, blue being the most and yellow the least preferred. In the overall assessment of beauty, shape was more important than color.
Prototypical flowers, i.e., radially symmetrical flowers with low complexity, were rated as the most beautiful. We also found a positive effect of sharp flower contours and blue color on the overall rating of flower beauty.