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From “Tall Bearded Color Groupings” in The World of Irises by The American Iris Society, edited by Bee Warburton and Melba Hamblen:

“The Sass brothers saved dark segregates from their blue and violet lines and began intercrossing them, introducing The Black Douglas in 1934. Meanwhile, Nicholls (1933) was working a line of darks. He used Valor, of his own raising, withThe Black Douglas to produce Black Valor. Valor, combined with a seedling involving Morning Splendor, Souv. de Madame Gaudichau, and Alcazar gave Mata Hari and Smolder, both dark purples, the latter with a reddish underglow. The cross of these two sibs gave Storm King, introduced in 1940.

“Paul Cook crossed Blue Boy, an I. aphylla derivative, with a white diploid. Crossing the resultant seedling into a line of purplish reds from the dark Cinnabar and bitoned Seminole, he continued to linebreed and was rewarded with Sable several generations later. Often referred to simply as ‘the black iris,’ this famous variety astounded the iris world when it was first marketed in 1938….

“The concentration (or dilution) of anthocyanin in flower parts has profound effects on color. Petal extracts from dark purple or black irises have far more pigment in them than do the paler blues. If the delphinidin in the tetraploid tall bearded irises is under monogenic control, and there is a dosage effect, we could expect four different concentrations and therefore four different hues of blue violet, but this is hard to prove because other pigments are usually present in varying amounts.

“The background effect is probably responsible for the so-called reds and browns in the tall bearded irises. In varieties showing this effect, the anthocyanin in the cell sap appears red or brown due to the presence of carotenoid yellows in the plastids.”

From “These Things I Like” by John C. Slemp in Sunshine and Shadows: An Anthology of Life in Prose and Poetry, compiled by Monta H. Crane and Selma Shepherd Downey:

I like the simple things of earth:
A daisy on the lawn,
A violet by the garden gate,
A breath of air at dawn.

I like the lovely things of earth:
A rainbow in the skies,
A row of purple irises,
A pair of shining eyes.

I like the solid things of earth:
A firm and rugged tree,
A mammoth boulder on the hill,
A mighty ship at sea.

I like the lasting things of earth:
A faith that conquers strife,
A love that brothers humankind,
A strong and worthy life.

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Hello!

This is the third of three posts with images of purple-toned irises from Oakland Cemetery that I photographed this year. The first post is Iris Purpleness (1 of 3) and the second post is Iris Purpleness (2 of 3).

Returning to the four-part comparison I shared in the first post, the galleries in this post include the tall bearded iris shown at the bottom right…

… whose heavily saturated purple and blue tones often approach black, especially in barely opened and newly opened buds where you are seeing what will become the bottom of a flower petal. If we zoom into a section of that iris’s standards just above the beard, we can get a better sense of how dark the colors really are, and how even the more shadowed regions still reveal the presence of blue and purple tones at levels close to — but not quite at — pure black.

The excerpt from The World of Irises at the top of this post — while a bit technical — is from a section of that book that goes into great detail about color development in irises, from around 1910 through the middle of the twentieth century. The authors spend a lot of time on the development of darker iris colors — differentiating them from the more commonly observed yellows and lighter purples — where breeding efforts produced more and more saturated colors approaching, and sometimes achieving, what we would characterize as solid black. In the excerpt, I linked to pages at The Historic Iris Preservation Society about individual irises that contributed dark color patterns, and you can see many other historically significant variants in the article The Development of Black Tall-Bearded Irises from The American Iris Society

The intensity of the pigmentation these developments produced is very evident in irises like the ones I photographed for this post; but plants with living, color-producing cells seldom produce single, unblended colors. The “background effect” mentioned in The World of Irises refers to the subtle variations of red and other colors that our eyes often miss when viewing these irises from a distance, yet the camera captures them quite effectively. Red, reddish-brown, or colors close to yellow and orange get threaded through some of the iris cells by the presence of carotenoids among the purple-producing anthocyanin. The influence of these carotenoid-based colors among a field of dark blues, dark purples, and blacks connects these newer irises to their ancestors, where the more common yellow and blue or purple colors were enhanced to produce intensely saturated colors and striking new color combinations.

Thanks for taking a look!

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From “Bearded Irises in Bed and Border” in Growing Irises by G. E. Cassidy:

“As a result of the dramatic developments in bearded irises… there is now available a fabulous range of flowers which must come as a revelation to those who still think of irises as ‘blue flags’….

“First as to colour — there are the irises of one colour, known as selfs, ranging from white to black through the rainbow with dark, light and pastel shades of each tint. Then there are the ‘amoenas’ with white or near-white standards and coloured falls, the ‘neglectas’ with light-blue standards and purple-toned falls, the ‘plicatas’ with light background overlaid with veining and stitching of a darker colour and the ‘variegatas’ with yellow standards and red-brown falls….

“Nowadays there are infinite variations of these basic themes with every sort of colour combination and with often brilliantly coloured and contrasting beards. In form and size, too, the bearded irises have changed almost beyond recognition and it is a far cry from the old drooping falls and floppy standards to the wide, flaring and ruffled falls and domed standards of the modern [tall bearded irises].

“Although suited to many applications in the garden, the bearded irises are seen at their dramatic and dazzling best when massed together in formal beds or borders. Here the range of colours can be seen to advantage, use can be made of variations in height to produce a graded effect and of the differences in flowering times to give a long flowering period….”

From “Purple Irises” in The Collected Poems by William Kean Seymour:

These purple flags in fancy seem to me
Delicate dames with their attendant squires —
Green-garbed and slim — who do their just desire:
Softly and well, and worship silently;
Or they are pools in a sun-smitten sea,
Deep hid in quietude of mirrored fires,
Decked with rich weeds and iridescent spires,
Shells and smooth stones and the anemone….

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Hello!

This is the second of three posts with images of purple-toned irises from Oakland Cemetery that I photographed earlier this year. The first post is Iris Purpleness (1 of 3).

Of the four irises featured in the three-post series, this post includes these two…

… as a way of showing the difference between a single-colored self iris (on the left), and a bitone iris where the standards are a lighter version of the same colors in the falls. This bitone also produces a very large flower, something evident from the fact that I took the two photos above from approximately the same distance and focal length.

The bitone’s translucent standards let light pass through, which results in colors shifting between blue and violet depending on how much sun was present when I snapped the photos, as well as what direction the light was coming from. While it’s possible to color-correct them in Lightroom so that the standards colors match in all the final photos, it’s more accurate to try and respect the lighting conditions. One editing trick I use here is to adjust white balance so that the surrounding green leaves — rather than the flower — are rendered as consistently as possible across all the photos. Since white balance adjustments affect the whole photo, this lets the purple colors fall naturally into the ranges that would have been present at the time, regardless of how lighting conditions varied. Green on opaque leaves like these is a color we intuitively recognize as accurate or inaccurate, so it can be used as a visual anchor for correcting white balance and ensuring that the color relationships throughout the image are accurate.

From my observations, the bitone iris produces plants whose height is about the same for each stem, and it would probably be classified as a medium or intermediate bearded iris. The self iris, on the other hand, produces stems of varying heights — as the photos illustrate — often in clusters where some short stems surround one or two taller ones, as in this photo where it’s earning its designation as a tall bearded iris.

Its flowers — even the shorter ones — exceed the height of nearly all its leaves, a convenience for any photographer who wants to focus on the flowers and leave out the leaves. Such heights also make this iris suitable for use as shown in my photos: positioned against a stone wall and in front of shrubs to create horizontal and vertical visual interest with colors and shapes that both complement and contrast with the landscaped surroundings.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

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From “The Role of Irises in Our Gardens” in Magic of Irises by Barbara Perry Lawton:

“The magic of irises in our gardens lies in their singular beauty, their linear quality and the ease with which they can be grown. The glory of the flowers and the brilliances and subtleties of their many colors endear the plants to gardeners…. Few perennials bring as much reliable color to garden beds and borders. Few are so adaptable to a wide range of soil and environmental conditions….

“Irises have grown in American gardens since the earliest of times and probably came to the Colony of Virginia with Englishwomen who arrived in 1619. The Persian iris is in the old plant list for the governor’s garden when Williamsburg was first planned in the seventeenth century. The bearded irises from Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, commonly called the German irises, crossed the Atlantic and were welcome introductions to American gardens wherever the colonists settled. The long congruent history of irises with humankind adds to the appeal of these old favorites of the perennial world….

“In form, irises range all the way from the single-stemmed grace of the bulbous Dutch iris to the well-known spear sheaves of the bearded irises to the thick clumps of the Siberian irises. [There] are all of the gradations of form in between these as well….

“As to flower form, again the range is wide. The standard petals may be upright or spreading. The falls may point downward or spread out like a saucer. The falls may have beards, crests, or neither. The size of the flowers may be miniature or larger than a tea saucer. Some iris flowers are heavily ruffled while others have no ruffles at all. The variety of flower forms is wide indeed, offering something for every taste.

“When it comes to color and patterns of color, the genus Iris is hard to beat. The flowers, named for the Greek goddess of the rainbow, fulfill the promise of that name better each year as both professional and amateur iris breeders come up with new variations on the theme. Colors in irises run from the whites through yellows and oranges to pinks to blues, lavenders, purples and purple-reds. Pure geranium red is the only color that is not in the iris palette. There are the palest of pastels and the most robust rich shades imaginable. There are bicolored, spotted, blotched and speckled iris flowers. Some iris flowers have standards and falls of different colors. It is difficult to think of a color or color combination that you can’t find among the irises.”

From “Reaching the Audience” by Pattiann Rogers in Heart of the Flower: Poems for the Sensuous Gardener by Sondra Zeidenstein:

We will start with a single blue dwarf iris
Appearing as a purple dot on a hairstreak
Butterfly seen in a distant pine barrens and proceed
Until we end with a single point of purple spiraling
Like an invisible wing in the center of the flower
Making fact.

We will investigate a stand of blue flags crimsoned
By the last sun still showing over the smoky edges
Of the ravine and illustrate in sequence the glazing
Of those iris by the wet gold of an early dawn.

We will survey a five-mile field of purple iris
Holding bristle-legged insects under the tips
Of their stamens and measure the violet essence
Gathered at the bases of their wings and devote
One section to a molecule of iris fragrance
Preserved and corked in a slender glass.

There will be a composition replicating the motion
Of the iris rolling sun continually over its rills
And another for the stillness of the iris sucking ivory
Moonlight through its hollows making ivory roots.

There will be photographs in series of the eyes
Of a woman studying the sepals of an iris
In a lavender vase and a seven-page account of the crested
Iris burning at midnight in the shape of its flame….

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Hello!

This is the first of three posts with new images of irises from Oakland Cemetery that I photographed earlier this year. For these three posts, I’ve assembled those irises whose colors fall in the blue to purple ranges, whose forms and color variations are reflected in both of the excerpts I included above. I titled this series “Iris Purpleness” because I didn’t know “purpleness” was a word until today, and I thought it sounded funny. It makes sense though (“redness” is a word, after all), and it even has a plural form — “purplenesses” — that I encourage you to try using in a sentence. 🙂

Here are the four varieties appearing in this three-part series. The top two would likely be classified as self irises — irises whose standards and falls produce colors in the same, or nearly the same, ranges. The first one demonstrates mostly blue with purple undertones, and the second reverses that color relationship, emphasizing a rich purple/violet color with blue undertones (and a small blue beard, which is atypical for the irises I find at Oakland). The iris on the right has petals that are quite thick and textured, producing a ruffled edge and a quality of reflecting its rich colors into the camera. As I was assembling these galleries, I puzzled for a while about why I never photographed the dwarf irises in the background of that second scene, but didn’t come up with an answer. Weird how something like that happens.

The iris on the bottom left is one I encounter every year at Oakland, whose colors demonstrate that of a bitone iris, a description that applies when an iris’s standards (which are large and prominent in this iris) are a lighter hue of the same color as its falls. In other words, this iris’s falls are a dark purple/violet, and its standards are a lighter shade of the same color combination. In this case, the standards are also thinner in texture and more translucent, so more light passes through them and makes those standards appear to glow, especially when light passes through them at an angle — which it did at the time I took these pictures.

Irises like those in the bottom right photograph strike me as a most intriguing color combination, where the petals display blends of dark blue, dark purple, and — especially in the unopened buds — a color that is close to pure black. Black in irises is both fascinating and visually contestable, as what we see (or what the camera captures) as black is difficult to differentiate as that color, or as the absence of color caused by shadows or contrasting lighting. That is, what we see as black might be very dark purple or very dark blue (or even very dark red), or it might be that plus lack of light on what we’re observing. I approached this topic a couple of years ago — see Black Iris Variations and Observations from 2024 — where I now think I overemphasized the black tones in these same irises over their subtle blue, purple, and black color relationships.

If you’d like to see other examples of black in irises, take a look at the Historic Iris Gallery on the Historic Iris Preservation Society website, and set the gallery’s filters for Standard Colors or Fall Colors to “Black/Near Black.” The gallery photos will include irises that do indeed look like they’re black or very dark gray, but will also show how many that get referred to as black are similarly colored to those I photographed with highly saturated purple, blue, and red tones that visually (or photographically) are so close to pure black that they’re named that way. Two of the irises from that gallery in particular — Night Ruler and Black Watch — are a lot like the purple, blue, and black color blends I find at Oakland, though of course I have no way to assign those variant names with certainty.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

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