Iris

The iris takes its name from Iris, the Greek goddess of the rainbow and messenger of the gods, named in Hesiod, an apt namesake for a flower that comes in the full spread of colours. Beyond the bloom, the plant's quiet economic importance lies underground: orris root, the dried rhizome of certain irises, develops a violet-like scent as it ages and is a prized fixative in perfumery, holding and steadying other fragrances, and it has been used to scent linen and powder for centuries. Culpeper places the flower-de-luce, the iris, under the Moon.

Orris root's perfumery value, noted above, comes at real cost: the rhizomes must be dried and cured for up to three years before they develop their violet-like scent, making orris one of the most expensive raw materials in perfumery by weight, and it is a key ingredient in classic formulations including Chanel No. 5, valued by perfumers less for its own scent than for its power to fix and extend the other fragrances blended with it. Florence's own civic emblem is the iris: the city's fleur-de-lis has stood for the flower since medieval times, and the specific iris grown around Florence and cured for orris root, Iris florentina, along with the closely related Iris germanica and Iris pallida grown across Tuscany, gives the root trade its Florentine name.

The heraldic fleur-de-lis, emblem of the French monarchy and of much else, is generally taken to be a stylised iris rather than a lily despite its name, the flower associated with French kingship from at least the twelfth century and linked in legend to the baptism of Clovis. Its three parts were read as faith, wisdom and valour, or given a Trinitarian sense, and in Christian art the iris, like the lily, could stand for the Virgin Mary, its sword-shaped leaves recalling the sword of sorrow that pierced her. The flower thus carries two overlapping symbolic lives, the classical rainbow-messenger and the medieval royal and Marian emblem, layered onto a plant valued in plain fact for its colours and its fragrant root.

The flower itself, apart from any heraldic or Marian reading, became the subject of one of the best-known paintings in Western art: Vincent van Gogh painted Irises in 1889 during his stay at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole in Saint-Remy-de-Provence, working directly from the asylum garden in the first week after his admission, and the canvas, now in the J. Paul Getty Museum, is read by art historians as a study in close observation undertaken as much for the artist's own stability as for the finished work.