Bloom Roots | The Code & Stories Behind Every Flower

In May 1889, one week after checking himself into the asylum at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Vincent van Gogh walked into the walled garden and painted the irises growing there. He called the work a lightning conductor for his illness. Ninety-eight years later, that canvas sold at auction for $53.9 million — the highest price ever paid for a painting at the time. That is a lot of weight for a flower that most people walk past in a neighbor's front bed every April. But the iris has always carried weight. The Greeks named it after the goddess who walked the rainbow between heaven and earth. French kings stamped it on their banners. Victorian letter-writers used it to say things they could not put in ink. The iris flower meaning shifts hard depending on color, and that is the fun of it. A purple iris and a yellow iris are saying two completely different sentences. Here is the whole spectrum, color by color. 🌸 Flower Profile Scientific Name Iris germanica (bearded iris) and rou...