roots - Historic Iris Preservation Society

Irises In A Graveyard
by Nigel Service (France)
The unsophisticated magnificence of
an iris I saw last spring, widespread across
northeast Greece in Muslim cemeteries, put
me in mind of other graveyards seen. The
tradition of Irises planted on tombs has been
widespread, a mourning flower not confined
to the white Iris albicans; forms of Iris
germanica are quite often used in European
graveyards for planting.
What about the graveyards of the
USA? I cannot recall, though I could easily
enough be wrong, mention of such places in
Roots.
But I have had one small experience
myself which convinced me that interesting
things might easily be found and anyone
who does not like the idea of lifting bits
of Irises from graves would bear in mind
8
that a dead person could have no finer
memorial than that the rediscovery of a lost
Iris should be linked, in memory and in the
records, with the name on their tombstone.
I am thinking of one occasion in
particular but there is no reason why it
should be unique, as numerous small towns
must have been founded and abandoned
in the earlier days of the American west. It
was in Colorado where I was looking for I.
missouriensis and, as happens when you are
looking for a wild iris, you tend to inquire
of anybody around if they have seen such
flowers anywhere. “Have you been to the
cemeteries of the dead towns above Central
City? Turn left in the town, there are plenty
of Irises up there,” advised a friend.
Not quite the sort of irises I was
thinking of perhaps, but a visit to Central
City became a previously unplanned part of
the expedition. The cemeteries were not that
easy to find; left turns seemed rare. No, not
easy unless you were lucky, and we were
lucky.
It was more a complex of graveyards,
covering a large area and mostly quite
sparsely furnished with tombs which were
often highly imaginative. The sections were
separated, each faith having its own space.
Certainly the Roman Catholic burials were
clearly distinct and a notice announced the
fenced off space as this.
All sign of the town, which must have
been sizable to justify such a complex, had
gone. Or was it a collective burial ground?
he had said “dead towns” in the plural -- a
burial center for several now abandoned
townships? In that case, the sparseness of
tombs is even more remarkable. Perhaps
it did not work out well right from the
beginning. Anyway, we are thinking of
irises, not of settlements and their failure.
And there were irises, or their foliage,
left: Tall bearded
Iris in a Muslim
cemetery at Organi,
northeast Greece,
May 2009
on a good number
of the graves. The
altitude was about
9,000 feet and
there was no sign of
flowering, but foliage