Floral tributes at funerals.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.