The exhibition Floral Impressions: Coins in Bloom opens late March 2026 at Royal Australian Mint. It explores the rich symbolism of flowers on coins. Struck into metal, these distinctive graphical floral symbols carry a diverse range of historical and cultural information about their place of origin.
Floral Impressions: Coins in Bloom explores three themes:
Floral emblems are flowers or plants specially selected to symbolise national identity, cultural heritage and environmental protection. Many countries incorporate native flora on their coins, both to celebrate their individual biodiversity and promote conservation efforts. The Australian kangaroo paw, the Western Samoan Teuila and the South African protea are just a few examples of how a flower can represent the natural diverse beauty of nations around the world.
Flowers used as decorative embellishments in coin design include the pervasive wreaths of laurel, olive and oak, which appear either around the periphery of the coin or decorating the heads of the obverse portrait. The symbolism of flowers can contain several messages when struck into a coin — a combination of historical, cultural and personal interpretations, allowing for a rich tapestry of themes to develop over time.
Commemorative symbolism — When depicted on a coin, flowers can be a tangible reminder of important moments in history, celebrate significant events, or pay tribute to individuals who have shaped our societies.
Floral coins convey symbolic messages to those to hold them, becoming a constant reminder of the common denominators which bind us together. While continuing to mint coins featuring floral motifs, the Royal Australian Mint upholds the tradition of using floral iconography as a visual historic record for future generations.
This is a free exhibition, no booking required.
Florals in Royal Australian Mint coin designs
The designers at the Royal Australian Mint incorporate floral elements into our coin designs for reasons that are commemorative, emblematic and purely decorative. Recent coin releases included in the Floral Impressions exhibition are:
Plantain lily, Hosta plantaginea, 1kg silver $30 (Year of the Rabbit), Australia, 2023 — The plantain lily grows in the shaded woodlands of south-eastern China and is a lucky flower for the Year of the Rabbit. During summer, its delicate white flowers open in the evening and close by morning. What time of day do you think it is on this coin?
Chocolate lily, Fritillaria biflora, silver $5 (Aussie Bubs), Australia, 2025 — Named for its rich chocolatey scent, the chocolate lily is a hardy native wildflower that grows throughout Australia’s grasslands and forests. The lily’s small purple flower is edible, as are the juicy tuber roots that grow beneath the ground.
Christmas orchid, Calanthe triplicate, 50 cents (Christmas Coin) Australia, 2025 [450] — The native Queensland Christmas orchid is found in densely shaded rainforests, unfurling its snowy white blossoms in elegant sprays against dark green corrugated leaves. Drawing upon the undulating asymmetrical line and organic curves of the Art Nouveau (‘New Art’) movement from 1890-1910, inspired an orchid design of expressive duality. The orchid appears elegant and graceful, yet possesses a powerful rhythmic or whiplash force.
Designing a Royal Australian Mint coin
Coin Designer Adam Ball explains the design process that builds flower designs into the story-telling visible on a coin. Adam explains how height and structure turn a two-dimensional image into a minted coin.
My name is Adam Ball and I'm a coin designer and sculptor here at the Royal Australian Mint. Uh, in this exhibition I worked on the Christmas Beetle coin, the Queen Elizabeth Regina coin, and the 125 years of Federation coin set. When I get given the design brief, I have to uh go away and obviously get inspired to create the coin. So I get into a lot of research and also bouncing ideas around the team. I start to draw and concept and come up with some nice ideas. That idea goes around to different people and gets refined. So it's not just uh me in isolation. It's lots of different people helping out.
When the design process starts, we need to start drawing. So I usually open up Photoshop. Um I have a blank coin in the background there and I start drawing. So when it comes to sculpting, so the drawing pro process is all done and it's time to sculpt. I usually start in this program here called Zbrush. Zbrush is pretty much like digital clay. So it looks like a 2D image, but if I zoom in here and um rotate, you can see there it's actually three-dimensional. So that is like an actual coin that I'm working on. So obviously a coin has height to it, not just X and Y, but also a Z axis. I can start sculpting. And this looks 2D looking at it um from front on, but in actual fact, as I'm drawing here, it's building up and creating relief. There's a part of coin design where it has to be uh representative of Australia, tell the story. Um and there's other parts which are how do you fill the space and how do you make it aesthetic. So those two things have to be balanced out.
So when it comes to this, uh, the story is told through having those floral elements on the coin and then the positioning of them isn't really telling much of that story, but it's more aesthetics. With this coin, the floral elements are actually quite important because if I was to take away the floral elements on this coin, you wouldn't know like is it from Australia, is it from Great Britain, which country does this come from? But we've got here the uh waffle to represent Australia and then the lily of the valley to represent uh her majesty's favourite flower. So it really is it's subtle, but it also grounds the coin in where does it come from and who does it represent. So if you were to reach out and touch the plaster, you're going to feel what the coin design is trying to convey. What you'll feel is um the artist is trying to convey the form and the textures. So if you run your fingers over it, you'll feel um how does this cheekbone work and then this eye or how does this texture of the fur feel?