There is a green leaf that has traveled for centuries from bouquet to bouquet of British royal brides, and almost no one notices it. It is myrtle - a shrub whose stem connects royal weddings like an invisible thread longer than a century and a half.

The story begins with Queen Victoria. In 1845, during a visit to Gotha in Germany, she received a sprig of myrtle from Prince Albert's grandmother. The couple planted a cutting at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight - and that shrub still grows there today. Victoria's daughter was the first to include myrtle in her wedding bouquet in 1858, and ever since, cuttings from the same plant have been used for every royal bride.

The list is impressive. Queen Elizabeth II carried white orchids with sprigs of myrtle. Diana had a cascading bouquet with orchids, roses, gardenias and myrtle. Kate Middleton - lily of the valley, hyacinths, ivy and myrtle. Meghan Markle - sweet pea, jasmine and, again, myrtle. Different flowers, different eras, the same quiet constant ingredient.

Why myrtle exactly? In the Victorian language of flowers, it means lasting love, fidelity, a happy marriage and fertility - almost perfect symbolism for the idealized story of married life. And the plant is beautiful in itself: an intensely green shrub with small white flowers and yellow stamens, which in autumn give way to edible blue berries, and it gives off a fresh, balsamic scent.

For the Balkan reader used to richer, more branching wedding bouquets, this is a reminder that sometimes the strongest detail is the smallest one. Not the crown, not the tiara, not the precious stone - but a single leaf that connects women from different centuries into the same tradition. Sometimes continuity is worth more than splendor.