Floral tributes at funerals.

Does anyone know when this sending flowers to funerals first started? Seems a strange tradition.

Jewish funerals do not have flowers. Where people are sitting 'shiva' (the mourning time), then it is quite normal for those visiting to talk about the deceased takes, biscuits, cakes, tea, coffee, etc which can be of help for visitor to the shiva home.

Not everyone requests no flowers Aspen. Anyone's free to donate to a charity in memory of the deceased and those who prefer to send/leave flowers are free to do so. Each to their own.

Aspen

Until relatively recently sending flowers when somebody died was the expected thing to do then it was changed to "No flowers. donations to (favoured charity")"
The ridiculous sight of layers of flowers beginning to rot and smell in cellophane wrappers really annoys me. Several boxes could be attached to the railings of these residences so people could drop in donations. Counting out the money would be a pleasanter job than clearing up the sludgy mess.

There is an army of volunteers removing the plastic from the floral tributes to The Queen, along with requests to the general public to remove plastic wrapping before leaving them.

They will be removed, mulched and used in The Royal Parks.

Interesting question Franbern so I googled it. Leaving flowers is one of the most ancient displays of mourning. Dr. Ralph Solecki in the 1950's discovered pollen and flower fragments in burial sites in Northern Iraq that had been there since 62,000 BC.

A lot of people request donations to charity instead of flowers at funerals and I will be one of them. But giving flowers to the bereaved or leaving them outside a house or at the scene of a fatal accident isn’t unusual and people will have turned up at various royal residences with flowers in hand and it’s unreasonable to expect charity boxes to have been put out and the public told to bring cash instead of flowers.

My father always said he’d come back and haunt anyone who wasted money on flowers for his funeral. So my mother did put a small bunch on his coffin - because she wanted him to!
Alas it didn’t work.

If everyone left just one flower at a palace, that would be more than enough. The teddy bears etc are an abomination.
The donation to charity is a good idea.

It’s often not possible to buy a single flower. I agree about teddy bears and suchlike and always dislike seeing them left in this way.

I recall that when my grandfather died my grandmother requested bunches of cut flowers rather than wreaths. They were collected from the church and taken to a local retirement home, and to the hospital where he died. She made the request at the hospital that these should be distributed to those patients who didn’t have any by their bedside. This was regarded as decidedly odd at the time but charity donations became popular much later.

My grandmother said she wanted her flowers while she was still alive. Very sensible.

Alll that plastic is just obscene. Floral reefs are all pinned onto polystirene these days and an environmental nonsense- which is why they are not allowed at Natural Burial sites.

oops wreaths, sorry.

Personally I think family flowers ? if they would like to, but having donations to a charity is much better , more people can benefit this way, whatever the charity may be ...

People have been asked not to bring Paddington Bears and marmalade sandwiches.
I don't like to see bedraggled flowers abandoned either.
There has to be a better way of paying respects.

Paddington Bears due to the Platinum Jubilee sketch.

My beloved auntie died earlier this year and it was agreed that one wreath of family flowers would sit on the coffin and we all made donations to Cancer Research.

Please do not leave marmalade sandwiches; think of the rats at night.

I was only 16 when my mother died and saw the world in a very black and white way. I can still remember how angry I was at the wreaths when none of the senders had ever bought her flowers when she was alive and would so have appreciated them. I buy flowers for people at any excuse on the grounds that they are important to the living, not the dead. DH’s coffin just carried a bunch of white roses (for a Yorkshire man) and friends and family donated to a cause close to his heart.

I so agree with your dad Witzend such a waste and actually inappropriate flowers in plastic wrappers.
Couldn't money have been raised towards the flood damage in Pakistan or a cancer charity.

I remember the funeral of a keen gardener in our church. It was summer and the Sunday School children and some adults went (on instructions that she had left) and picked flowers from her garden, then tied them in bunches and put them on the pews. At the end of the funeral we were all asked to take a bunch home. I thought it was a lovely idea. And not a plastic wrapping in sight!

I've always thought flowers to be a real waste at funerals. Surely, as someone else has already said, a wreath or arrangement on the coffin itself should suffice - and anyone else who wants to remember the deceased person in some way could make some form of donation to charity in their memory instead?

I also think a donation to a charity would help far more .
The piles of flowers seem ridiculous to me, half of them cannot be seen due to the ones on top and a lot of work is caused in having to clear them.

If people want to lay flowers that's fine by me.

We were chatting earlier about how lovely the simple flower wreaths on Her Late Majesty's coffin have been: carefully chosen and understated. For me, there is something timeless and comforting about honouring the dead this way. When my Mum died, I was so very fortunate that the local florist completely 'got' what I wanted for the wicker coffin - something soft and floral and fragrant. When the flowers arrived, they exceeded all expectation and my darling Mum would have simply loved them. They came to the 'do' afterwards and then sat on my dining table for a week afterwards, I have a photo of them on my FB profile.
But I agree with other posters about the excesses of plastic wrapped bunches in St James's park. The resulting compost must be some of the most expensive on the planet.