Tag: irises

From “Dalmatica and English Nurserymen” in Classic Irises and the Men and Women Who Created Them by Clarence Mahan:

“[Peter] Barr and his sons Peter Rudolph and William were leading breeders of irises. Beginning with the introduction of a reddish-violet iris named Garibaldi in 1873, the Barrs produced scores of new irises. These Barr irises were highly regarded in their day. Mention has already been made of the Pallida Dalmatica look-alike Princess Beatrice. A few of the other popular Barr varieties were brownish-yellow Bronze Beauty, light blue-violet Alice Barr, blue-violet Khedive, and yellow and red-violet ‘Robert Burns’….

“One of Peter Barr’s lasting contributions to the world of garden irises was the gift of a special vocabulary. Garden writer and iris hybridizer Sydney B. Mitchell explained how this came about in his book Iris for Every Garden:

“‘About 1873 Barr issued a descriptive list of his extensive collection [of irises], arranging the varieties in groups: aphylla (including forms of germanica), amoena (white standards and purple falls), neglecta (lavender standards and dark falls), pallida (lavender, light and dark blue, and rosy-toned purple selfs), squalens (forms with blended, often rather dull, combinations of smoky blue and gray or yellow and red), and variegata (clear yellow standards and falls either veined a dark red or nearly solid ox-blood color). Barr’s classification was adopted and continued in English and American lists into the nineteen-twenties. Even to this day such terms as ‘amoena’ and ‘variegata’ are applied to modern hybrids of these old color patterns.’

“The terms ‘amoena,’ ‘neglecta,’ and ‘variegata’ continue to be used by those who write and talk about irises in the 21st century. These words refer to the color patterns described by Barr and form an enduring element of iris argot. It is, after all, easier to say than an iris cultivar is a ‘neglecta’ than to say that it is a ‘violet or purple iris with standards that are lighter in color than its falls.”

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Hello!

This is the last of my iris posts for 2024 — unless I come across some of the very late bloomers, like the Leopard Lily (Iris domestica), which I can often find in July. The galleries below show those I photographed with white or nearly white standards and contrasting shades of purple in their falls. Toward the middle, you will also see some that have a thin white border around the edges of the purple petals, providing an extra touch of pizazz.

Separate from any scientific or botanical names, descriptions of iris color schemes have their own names — such as amoena and neglecta — which are explained in the quotation at the top of the post. The term “amoena” refers to an iris with white standards and colored (in this case, purple) falls, and “neglecta” is more ambiguously used to describe an iris where the standards and falls show distinct variations (light and dark, typically) of the same color, such as blue, purple, or violet. If you would like to read about some of the other terms used to describe iris colors, see (with pictures!) Iris Flower Patterns from the National Gardening Association.

While I’d heard some of these terms before, I don’t think I realized that they were an important part of understanding iris colors and talking or writing about them. Perhaps they fill the gap I’ve run into frequently, that it’s quite difficult to identify individual iris variants when you come across them in a garden or from photographs (unless you bought them at a garden center and kept their “my name is” tag). Assuming I photograph them again next year (and hunt down some new ones), I think I may try to separate them by these “official” color categories, just for the sake of learning how to apply them to my discoveries.

Thanks for taking a look!

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From “Iris” in The English Flower Garden by William Robinson:

“The Iris is one of the oldest of our garden flowers, in many forms too, but… it has come to us in greater novelty and beauty in recent years….

“The old Irises of our gardens are usually of the Germanica class; there is much variety among these groups, and they are very hardy and precious, and excellent for the adornment of gardens and even walls and thatched roofs, as we see in France, the Iris of this great group having a valuable power of thriving on such surfaces as well as on good soil.

“There is a group of waterside and water-loving Iris, much less seen in our gardens than the above, and some of them not yet come to us, but of great value. They are allied to the common yellow Iris of our watercourses, but are taller and richer in colour, the golden Iris (aurea), Monnieri, and ochroleuca being the best known so far, and very free, hardy, and beautiful plants they are, thriving, too, almost anywhere, but best in rich, moist soil….

“Then there are the brilliant purple and gold Iris reticulata and its allies, little bulbous Irises, for the spring garden, early and charming things, many beautiful; Irises that flower in winter and early spring, like the Algerian Iris; others happy in Britain on warm soils and warm corners, and some for the rock garden, like the crested Iris; and the many pretty forms of Iris pumila, of some of which edgings were made in old gardens….”

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

“Variegata: An iris with yellow or near-yellow standards and darker falls of brown, red, or purple…

“Named for Iris variegata, this distinctive bicolor pattern is well represented in all six classes. In tall beardeds, cultivars include ‘Jurassic Park’ (Lauer 1995), ‘Mine’ (Headrick 2004), ‘Kathy Chilton’ (Kerr 2006), and ‘Born to Please’ (Rogers 2006)….

“The original pattern of yellow and brown still colors many irises in the MTB class but has probably tired just as many gardeners because of its limitations. I mean really, how many ways can you do yellow-brown-red in variation before it becomes a little trite? But jaded eyes aside, the variegata pattern makes great art in the landscape. The pattern plays off the familiar colors of yellow and purple in other plants, while jazzing up the color display more than something white or pink might.”

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Hello!

The irises in this series have some similarities to those I posted previously as Brown Iris Mix — but I separated these out because they have a more distinct variations between the colors of the standards and the falls. Shades of gold and yellow-gold (rather than brown) dominate the standards, with purple tones filling the falls. Admittedly the distinction is a little ambiguous, but you may also see more stippling through these flower petals, suggesting that they are different variants than those in the earlier batch. There is a reasonably good chance that some or all these irises would be correctly identified as Iris variegata L. — often referred to as a “Hungarian Iris” in some parts of the world — but (as we sometimes say here) nobody knows for sure….

🙂

Until I found the first quotation about irises that I posted above, I was unaware of the practice in France of growing irises on rooftops. If you would like to see some examples — which may also include other European countries where irises are grown up high — click here. And if you’d like to see some additional irises in color schemes like those I photographed, they are Jurassic Park, Mine, Kathy Chilton, and Born to Please, from the second quotation above.

Thanks for taking a look!

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From “Iris Germanica” in Classic Irises and the Men and Women Who Created Them by Clarence Mahan:

“What is Iris germanica? Trying to define Iris germanica is not easy….

“Mathematician George Spencer Brown in Laws of Form asserts there are certain things of which one cannot speak, and he cites music as an example. You can try to describe a sonata, but you will never convey to another person the experience of actually hearing it. The same is true of an iris. An attempt can be made to describe it, but words will never be able to convey the experience of seeing the iris. Fortunately, you have seen Iris germanica.

“Even if you have not seen Iris germanica in the garden you have seen it in paintings or at least in reproductions of famous paintings. The purple irises in Van Gogh’s masterpiece Irises, which sold for the record-breaking price of $53.9 million in 1987, are Iris germanica.

“The irises that fill half the canvas of Claude Monet’s painting … The Artist’s Garden at Giverny, are Iris germanica. Monet’s impressionist style makes the identity of the irises difficult to discern but there is a key in the painting. The key is that wisteria is in bloom. Tall bearded iris species and cultivars bloom after wisteria flowers have drifted to the ground, but intermediate bearded irises, of which Iris germanica is the prototype, bloom earlier when the wisteria opens its buds.

“The typical form of Iris germanica has a 2-foot stem with two branches, one long and one short. It usually has four flowers, two at the terminal and one on each of the branches…. The flowers of different forms of Iris germanica come in various shades of violet but there are also white forms. The most common form has blue-violet standards and red-violet falls…. It is one of the hardiest of all irises. “

From “The Maid’s Thought” in The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers by Robinson Jeffers:

Why listen, even the water is sobbing for something.
The west wind is dead, the waves
Forget to hate the cliff, in the upland canyons
Whole hillsides burst aglow
With golden broom. Dear how it rained last month,
And every pool was rimmed
With sulphury pollen dust of the wakening pines.
Now tall and slender suddenly
The stalks of purple iris blaze by the brooks….

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Hello!

As you can tell from some of the photos below — especially the first five — these purple irises were among the tallest I photographed at Oakland Cemetery’s gardens this year, rivaling the height of some of the black irises I posted previously (see Black Iris Variations and Observations). They posed so I’d capture their height and could sweep in their background surroundings — and I liked the contrast between the purple irises and the fields of yellow flowers behind them. Those flowers — most likely a variety of spurge, probably Euphorbia polychroma, or Cushion spurge — were plentiful earlier this summer, and have since reverted to their more flowerless state, still providing a fine green blanket covering large areas of the gardens.

Thanks for taking a look!

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From Iris: Flower of the Rainbow by Graeme Grosvenor:

“Pink is currently and has been for many years the most popular colour in bearded iris and it is easy to understand why this is so when you observe the large range of quality iris available in the many shades of pink. It seems that most hybridisers cannot resist the temptation to ‘dabble in pink’ and so we have a huge pool of iris from which to select. Many pink iris have been less than satisfactory garden subjects and many have proven quite difficult to grow, but there are now plenty of pink iris with admirable garden qualities.

“‘Social Event‘ (Keppel, 1991) is my pick as the best all round pink iris available… [It] is a very clear light to mid pink with some peach overtones and a slightly lighter area beneath the flame-red beard. No matter how it is described it is a most beautiful iris which gives a very pink effect in the garden. The form of the flower is outstanding with beautiful balance between the standards and falls and heavily ruffled and laced petals of excellent substance. In quality of bloom it takes pink iris to new heights.”

From The Iris Book by Molly Price:

“To gardeners whose idea of pink irises stems from the old orchid-pink diploids such as ‘Pink Opal‘ and ‘Pink Satin‘, the modern tangerine-bearded pinks will be a surprise. As with other plants in which pink is bred from yellow varieties, the yellow influence is still discernible in many of these irises that produce such a dazzling garden show. Two of the tallest pink varieties — and my choice for the back of the border — are ‘Spring Charm‘ and ‘Garden Party‘.

“There are, as yet, comparatively few true pinks. ‘June Meredith‘ was the first and is the most famous. ‘Fairy Fable‘ is new with smooth ruffled flowers shading from deeper to pale pink; but the finest of all true pink irises is ‘Esther Fay‘ — even the beard of ‘Esther Fay’ is a deep true pink. ‘Fair Luzon‘ has smaller laced flowers of deep pink with a cerise beard. ‘One Desire‘ shows a faint blue tone but this somehow makes it seem pinker.”

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Hello!

Here we have another series of irises where one color — pink — dominates, yet each flower shows off a variety of additional related colors, including peach, apricot, red or burgundy, yellow, shades of lavender or purple, and swatches or beards of glowing orange. Many of the predecessors to irises like these — you can see some of them by clicking through the links in the quotations above — will show a single color, but subsequent breeding blended in additional colors, and separated them between the flowers’ standards and falls, or among their beards.

Thanks for taking a look!

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