Notes from the Underground

For iris lovers, and those who enjoy smelling like a dirty old rhizome.

I have a knob of orris sitting on my desk. It’s not even worth sharing a photo because you might accuse me of cherishing an ossified turd. It looks like nothing. Or, I guess, like what it is: a brown lump of desiccated plant matter. But it smells like faraway places. Deep time. Answerless questions. It’s velvety; simultaneously damp and dusty. It’s pretty in a way that isn’t pretty, floral in a way that isn’t floral. And the fact that it comes from iris but smells nothing like iris makes it weird in a way that I find very hard to resist.

Mourning iris, Florentine iris, Dalmatian iris, from Basilius Besler’s 1613 florilegium Hortus Eystettensis.