Category: exploring place

From “Developing the Flower” in Iris: The Classic Bearded Varieties by Claire Austin:

“Over the past century the development of the bearded iris has been tremendous. At the beginning of this period the flowers came in only white, yellow or purple, or occasionally a combination of all three colours. This often resulted in a murky blend of muted shades. Since then, hybridizers have expanded the range into a vast rainbow of colours — and as the number of tones has increased, so has the size of the flower. Because of this, the petals, which once were smooth and delicate in shape, are now of necessity ruffled, fluted and thick in substance.”

From “The Iris Beds” in My Garden in Summer by E. A. Bowles:

“Here at the corner facing the Lunatic Asylum beds and the large Ivy-covered Yew, the mixture [of irises] is mostly composed of yellows, bronzes, and whites. Of the former Gracchus is one of the best, and so free in growth and flowering that it needs no care; the daffodil-yellow standards are as bright a yellow as any Iris could produce, while the falls are netted with crimson and white and so proclaim it a form of I. variegata, but in size and colouring it quite eclipses its parent, who has to live a little further along round the bend to avoid being put to shame by her handsome child.”

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Hello!

This is the second of two posts featuring yellow and white irises from Oakland Cemetery’s gardens; the first post is Yellow and White Bearded Irises (1 of 2).

The second quotation above is from one of the three delightful seasonal botany books written by Edward Augustus Bowles (1865-1954). You may remember his Lunatic Asylum since I wrote about it previously (see Winter Shapes: Corkscrew Hazel) — and it’s always fun to me to find a relevant quotation from his books for one of my posts. I like his writing style, because — even in the short selection above — you get a sense of the pure joy he feels observing and writing about what he sees in his gardens. The three books are available from Books to Borrow at the Internet Archive, at these links:

My Garden in Spring,

My Garden in Summer, and

My Garden in Autumn and Winter.

My other iris posts for this season are:

Purple and Violet Iris Mix (2 of 2)

Purple and Violet Iris Mix (1 of 2)

Irises in Pink, Peach, and Splashes of Orange (2 of 2)

Irises in Pink, Peach, and Splashes of Orange (1 of 2)

Irises in Blue and Purple Hues (2 of 2)

Irises in Blue and Purple Hues (1 of 2)

Black Iris Variations (and Hallucinations)

Thanks for taking a look!

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From “The Nineteenth Century Florist” in Old Fashioned Flowers by Sacheverell Sitwell:

“The colour of Irises has been changed and extended almost out of recognition during the last thirty years. Hybridization from so many varieties and species, newly discovered, has been immensely facilitated. Irises have, as well, become more scented than they were before….

“Irises are larger than they ever were before: they are deeper, brighter or paler in colour, while their markings are such as the most fanatic of the old florists would have approved. Within its limits nothing has been found impossible of realization….

“The wonderful colour faculty of the Iris, which possesses in its species, or primitives as they could be called, such depth and brilliance, such texture and translucency, made a sure guide, we may think, to the dormant proclivities of the flower.”

From A Guide to Bearded Irises: Cultivating the Rainbow for Beginners and Enthusiasts by Kelly Norris:

“Bearded irises aren’t stalwarts of the gardening tradition for nothing. Hike on over to your local cemetery, and you’ll probably find a clump of bearded irises, purple or yellow, maybe white, growing effortlessly along the fence or atop a gravesite. They probably get mowed off in June each year, and yet for decades they’ve persisted. Sure, they don’t make them all this tough anymore, and like everything, irises do best with some care and attention. For bearded irises, this basically means keeping them groomed and divided, in a sunny, well-drained spot.”

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Hello!

This is the first of two posts featuring yellow and white irises from Oakland Cemetery’s gardens. The white irises were the first ones I encountered this year, and I photographed them as far back as early March. Many sustained damage from a mid-March freeze and never quite fully recovered, leading to blossoms that opened partially or opened with missing or desiccated flower petals. Yet they are still unmistakeable as irises, and white — like yellow — has a way of showing off their shapes and textures as the lighter colors alternate with shadowy detail.

My previous iris posts for this season are:

Purple and Violet Iris Mix (2 of 2)

Purple and Violet Iris Mix (1 of 2)

Irises in Pink, Peach, and Splashes of Orange (2 of 2)

Irises in Pink, Peach, and Splashes of Orange (1 of 2)

Irises in Blue and Purple Hues (2 of 2)

Irises in Blue and Purple Hues (1 of 2)

Black Iris Variations (and Hallucinations)

Thanks for taking a look!

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From “The Virtuous Plants” in The Origins of Garden Plants by John Fisher: 

“The Iris was said to have been first adopted as an emblem in the sixth century by King Clovis of the Franks, after a clump of Iris pseudacorus, Yellow Water Flag, had shown him where he could ford a river and so escape from a superior force of Goths….

“It was revived as an emblem, the Fleur de Louis, by Louis VII of France in 1147 when he set off on the disastrous second crusade. It figured at one time in our own royal coat-of-arms and still appears on the dials of non-digital compasses to show the way to the north. But the Iris was used in medicine as well as in heraldry. It was said to be a remedy against dropsy, jaundice, the ague, stones in the kidney and a number of less serious though distressing complaints. The blue garden variety, Iris germanica, was cultivated even in the ninth century by Walafrid Strabo, abbot of Reichenau, the famous monastery on Lake Constance, and no doubt soon spread to gardens this side of the channel.”

From “In Dreams” by Dylan Thomas in The Poems of Dylan Thomas:

And in her garden grow the fleur de lys,
    The tall mauve iris of a sleeping clime.
Their pale, ethereal beauty seems to be
    The frail and delicate breath of even-time.
And night, who stooped to kiss the pallid leaves
    To that strange colour, sighing gently, grieves
For her who walks within her garden-close.
    Somehow it seems, amid the evening haze,
That in her garden, rather than the days,
    There should be night for ever, and no rose,
But only iris on their slender stalks
Along the borders of the garden-walks.

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Hello!

This is the second of two posts featuring irises in shades of purple and violet from Oakland Cemetery’s gardens. The first post is Purple and Violet Iris Mix (1 of 2), and my previous iris posts for this season are:

Irises in Pink, Peach, and Splashes of Orange (2 of 2)

Irises in Pink, Peach, and Splashes of Orange (1 of 2)

Irises in Blue and Purple Hues (2 of 2)

Irises in Blue and Purple Hues (1 of 2)

Black Iris Variations (and Hallucinations)

Thanks for taking a look!

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From “Iris: The Flower of the Rainbow” in Flowers in History by Peter Coats:

“The story of the iris begins many years before the birth of Christ, and it is said that among the spoils of war that the Pharaoh of Egypt, Thutmosis I, brought back from his Syrian wars in 1950 BC, was an important collection of medicinal roots, dried herbs and seeds. Only a few were meant to be grown as flowers, and most of the collection was put at the disposal of the court physicians and sorcerers, for research and the production of love philtres. But Thutmosis thought highly of his botanical booty and had it commemorated on a carved marble panel which can still be seen on the walls of the temple of the Theban Ammon at Karnak. The carving includes several different flowers — among them, Egyptologists claim, a representation of Iris oncocyclus.”

From “Over the Rainbow: Bearded Irises and Your Garden” in A Guide to Bearded Irises: Cultivating the Rainbow for Beginners and Enthusiasts by Kelly Norris:

“Purple, almost to annoyance, is the quintessential iris color. Though a rather vernacular word for any number of specific colors between red and blue, including… indigo and violet, it permeates the rainbow in gardeners’ minds when someone utters the word ‘iris.’ Like blue does for delphiniums or gentians, and yellow for sunflowers or daffodils, purple in many ways defines the genus Iris.”

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Hello!

Happy June the First to all those who celebrate!

To mark the occasion — which is also the start of meteorological summer (because weather-people apparently have their own seasons); the beginning of Atlantic Hurricane Season (only good news if you’re a hurricane); and the date of many historical events and holidays — I’ve assembled the first of two posts featuring irises in various shades of purple and violet from Oakland Cemetery’s gardens.

Violet can be difficult to differentiate from purple, especially among flowers that bloom not in single colors but in hues that vary so much depending on the condition of the flower, the light or shadow nearby, and whether or not The Photographer remembers what color they were when he or she photographed them. I had originally thought those flowers in the middle of the images below — those next to a concrete wall — were violet or deep purple in color, but couldn’t seem to get a natural look for them in Lightroom.

So I went back to the gardens to hunt them up again, discovering that, in real life, the ruffled edges and petal undersides were often violet, but the center mass of each flower’s falls was more like fuchsia or magenta in color, rather than violet. Violet doesn’t dominate as a color in most of these photos, but instead is scattered throughout individual flowers wherever purple seems to head in a dark direction. I know this because — color nerd that I’m apparently becoming — I used a color slurping tool to pick out groups of pixels and determine which ones were interpreted as shades of violet versus shades of purple, blue, or magenta. Yes, I actually did that….

My previous iris posts are:

Irises in Pink, Peach, and Splashes of Orange (2 of 2)

Irises in Pink, Peach, and Splashes of Orange (1 of 2)

Irises in Blue and Purple Hues (2 of 2)

Irises in Blue and Purple Hues (1 of 2)

Black Iris Variations (and Hallucinations)

Thanks for taking a look!

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From “Iris: The Flower of the Rainbow” in Flowers in History by Peter Coats:

“Iris was the Goddess of the Rainbow, and in Greek mythology she is hardly distinguishable from the natural phenomenon itself. On occasions she seems to have acted as messenger from the gods, as a link between Olympus and mortals below, in that she touched both sky and earth….

“Iris, the flower, may surely be said to have borrowed its various colors from the sky. There are few iris in cultivation which are, in color, different to the tints the sky can show, and there are few skies, of untroubled blue, thundery purple, fresh primrose or dying pink, which might not find their colors reflected in the petals of the modern iris….”

From “Over the Rainbow: Bearded Irises and Your Garden” in A Guide to Bearded Irises: Cultivating the Rainbow for Beginners and Enthusiasts by Kelly Norris:

“Biologists surmise that elaborate patterning in flowers like the iris probably results in response to pollinators. It’s hard to imagine what iris patterns look like to bees or other insects…. The next time you’re in the garden, just imagine what a bee thinks.”

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Hello!

This is the second of two posts showing irises from Oakland Cemetery’s gardens featuring pink, peach, and orange colors. The first post is Irises in Pink, Peach, and Splashes of Orange (1 of 2).

My previous iris posts for this year are:

Irises in Blue and Purple Hues (2 of 2)

Irises in Blue and Purple Hues (1 of 2)

Black Iris Variations (and Hallucinations)

Thanks for taking a look!

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