The traditional difference between “live” and “dead” metaphors is not justified, according to the Cognitive Theory of metaphor, because they all would be “alive” (Gibbs 1994) to the extent that both categories obey cognitive processes that are always active. Nevertheless, although the theoretic works about phraseology have questioned the boundary between creation and lexicalization, the poetic metaphors do not lose their specificity compared to those belonging to common language. The comparison –within the same semantic field- between the poets’ creative metaphors and the idiomatic metaphors, more or less fixed within the collective linguistic heritage, can bring relevant empirical data to this debate. The floral semantic field constitutes a privileged example for this, since three types of symbolism are involved together: the associations of idea assigned to the “real” flowers in each culture, the figurative values related to their names in each language, and the individual poetical creations susceptible, in every national literary tradition, of sanctioning, developing, widening, subverting or renewing such associations. This work examines the Spanish figurative phraseology with flower names, and the metaphorical use of them in the complete works by Federico García Lorca, a poet who was particularly sensitive to this issue.