Re: HIST: Flags

At 04:55 PM 8/23/99 -0500, you wrote:
>From: "Cliff & Rita Snyder" <snyder@eden.com>
>
>Michael,
>
>I find it very difficult to believe that corners were marked with iris. It
>is a nice story, but the realities of land ownership then or now would be
>incompatible with such an impermanent marker. They could die, be burned in
>range fires, won't live in swampy areas, no topsoil at the corner, drift
>away from the center of the original planting, etc. etc.
>
>Cliff

Here in the South, where irises are called flags by a lot of people, I have been asked to believe stories that are far more improbable. Part of my job is picking up realty transfers for my newspaper and I've seen hundreds of property descriptions based on what some would regard as not-so-permanent markers. White oak trees are very popular. I have seen a corner marker once described as a "white stone in the center of the road" and a local attorney has a description on his office wall of a hand-written deed that says, "and thence six poles to a flowering squash plant."
I'd submit that a clump of flag iris is far more permanent than that, and perhaps more than many white oak trees, which have a bad habit of being cut for whiskey barrels, while those old granny's blue flag irises, you can mow them, you can drive over them, but you cain't hardly kill 'em.


James Brooks
Jonesborough, TN
hirundo@tricon.net
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