From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishthe flower of somethingthe flower of somethingliteraryBEST the best part of something young men killed in the flower of their youth → flower
Examples from the Corpus
the flower of something• The flower of the nation's youth was lost in the war.• The period of emancipation, the flowering of literary tradition, the Holocaust.• They liked to put pictures around their house, and the flowers of the field on the kitchen table.• How dare they believe that they could stand before the flower of Bretonnian chivalry!• Even I, in the flower of my youth, recognize that as a terrifying thought.• After all, indiscretion is only the flowering of desperation.• They picked the flowers of the hedgerows and every new find had to be identified in Blackie's.• To each side were gardens brilliantly blooming with the flowers of spring. 