A Latest Roundup of Iris Flower Meanings and Legends
The iris is an important garden plant, with large and beautiful flowers and fresh green leaves, offering high ornamental value. Many species are used for garden display. In landscaping, they can be used to arrange flower beds, planted in damp border ground, by ponds and lakesides, or laid out as a dedicated iris garden. They can also be used as cut flowers and ground cover plants. Now let us take a look at the flower meanings and legends of the iris!
The Flower Meaning of the Iris
Elegance. The iris represents the messenger of love. Although it has thick roots, broad sword-like leaves, and very strong vitality, it is highly respected and widely used because it is a raw material for making perfume, so its flower meaning is elegance. People born under the blessing of this flower have a soft and charming temperament and are good at socializing, yet they are not people who trifle with life. They have a plan for the future and know how to play, study, and work. This can be said to be their lifestyle. Is such a life not very elegant?
The Symbolism of the Iris
The iris is named for its petals, which are shaped like the tail of an iris bird. It comes in colors such as blue, purple, yellow, white, and red. The transliteration of its genus name is commonly known as “Iris.” In Greek mythology, Iris is the goddess of the rainbow. She is the messenger between the gods and the mortal world, and her main task is to carry the souls of good people after death back to heaven via the rainbow bridge between heaven and earth. The colorful irises each represent different meanings: white iris represents purity, yellow indicates enduring friendship and warmth and cheerfulness, blue is admiration for someone's simple elegance and generosity or a secret crush, and purple implies love and good fortune.
The Legend of the Iris
Iris was the name of a girl. She was originally the daughter of a landlord, very beautiful and clever, and she loved dancing very, very much. When she was 16, she fell in love with a long-term hired laborer who worked for her family. He was a very handsome young man, and his worn clothes could not hide his handsome appearance.
However, Iris's father would not agree to them being together no matter what. In the old society, without the order of parents and the words of a matchmaker, they could not be together. So the two wanted to elope, but the young man worried that Iris was a rich young lady who had fallen in love with him on impulse, and that if she truly ran away with him she would not be able to endure hardship.
No matter how Iris promised, the young man still rejected her. From then on, Iris was no longer happy and no longer danced. In the end, she killed herself in that field of unnamed white flowers that she loved. From then on, this field of white flowers was no longer white; it slowly turned into many colors. Every flower season, it was as if thousands of butterflies were dancing there, and from afar it also looked like Iris dancing gracefully. Later, people called this field of unnamed flowers iris flowers.