The lock screen and display manager are two separate pieces of software. The display manager runs before a user profile has been selected for graphical login, so it does not have access to your user desktop/display settings

The article says it draws 16W on idle, so much worse battery life than the official boards

It looks like that answer might be lost to time, but the flower has been used to represent “everlasting love and devotion” since the middle ages. source (wikipedia)