Ashmolean The Elements of Drawing, John Ruskin’s teaching collection at Oxford

I have myself no doubt, though I would not venture yet to ask you to accept my belief, that the iris, not the violet, is the true ίον of Greece; the ίον of Pindar at the infancy of Iamus is the yellow water-flag; and it is the splendid purple of the dark iris (still an entirely common flower in Greece; ad pagos per totam Græciam frequens, Sibthorp’s Flora Græca, vol. i. plate 40 ) which gives rise to all the expressions respecting the purple of the sea, or of shadows. Note further the relation of Ion himself to the dew, under the rocks of the Acropolis, and to the Earth, throughout the whole drama of Euripides. Triptolemus also, when he is the spirit of Agriculture generally, bears a rod in his hand with the fleur-de-lys for its top; and that Greek form of it is the real origin of the conventional types of the Byzantine, Florentine, and French one. I give it to Cora, therefore, rather than the violet and narcissus: and in its pure white Florentine type, ( the red fleur-de-lys is given, from the tower of Giotto, further on in the series ), it being quite the most lovely expression among plants of the floral power hidden in the grass, and bursting into luxuriance in the spring.