From “The Genus Belamcanda” in The Iris by Brian Mathew:
“It is generally accepted that this interesting genus contains only one species…. The one frequently grown species is B. chinensis, easily recognized by its flower which has six equal reddish-spotted perianth segments, not differentiated into falls and standards as in an Iris. Furthermore, the three styles are slender like those of Crocus sativus, with a terminal stigma, not expanded and petaloid like those of irises in which the stigma is a flap on the underside of each of the three style branches. Apart from this, the habit of growth is similar to some irises….
“In cultivation in Britain Belamcanda presents no problems if given reasonably good soil with plenty of humus in sun or semi-shade. It does not like a very warm dry position and should have plenty of moisture in the growing season. I find that it is completely hardy in Surrey but is not a long-lived plant. It is however easily raised from seed and flowers in two or three years from sowing….
“The inflorescence is widely branched with about three to twelve flowers about 4cm in diameter. These have six equal perianth segments which are a yellowish or orange-red colour mottled with red or blackish-purple spots. They have hardly any perianth tube at all and the pedicels are jointed just below the ovary so that the whole flower quickly falls off from this point if it is not fertilized. The three style branches are slender, not petaloid….
“Unlike irises, the capsules split open and the three locules curl outwards leaving the central axis exposed. The large blackish seeds stay attached for a considerable time before falling, this feature having given rise to the common name of Blackberry Lily. Belamcanda chinensis is a native of Japan, China, eastern Russia in the Ussuri region, Taiwan and northern India. It occurs in sandy meadows near the sea, in moist scrubland and in shady places from sea level to about 2000 metres altitude.”
Blood-red the aloes flank the winding road. As if aflame with leaping sparks each fire-lily glows. But nothing, nothing stirs… only a breeze that flows that seems to pause and waver there the grass-seed grows.
Above, the blue, blue sky; and far below, the falling stream drifts through the orchards with a flash of green. And no sound breaks the hovering peace of this still mountain scene….
The gate stands in a maroola’s shade. A wholeness in me, harmony and no bitterness, no hate. I lift the catch… and in my heart open a gate.
Hello!
This is the second of four posts with photos of Iris domesticathat I took at Oakland Cemetery during the summer and early fall. The first post is Iris domestica: From Summer to Fall (1 of 4), where I describe my annual trips to photograph this plant, detail some of its unique characteristics, and provide a three-part illustration of its lifecycle.
Below I show several more batches of orange-spotted Iris domestica — the variant that honors leopards and their markings by calling them Leopard Lilies or Leopard Flowers (among other common names) — where I have zoomed from wider shots showing the plants’ surroundings to macro photos that reveal the colors and intricate structures of one or two individual blossoms. With close-up photos like these, you could read through the excerpt describing Iris domestica‘s botanical architecture (published in 1990, when it was still called Belamcanda chinensis) at the top of this post, follow the links to Wikipedia definitions for any unfamiliar terms, and easily identify different parts of the plants.
In the first five photos below, you’ll see batches of Iris domestica thriving near some of Oakland’s large Yucca plants, and in front of a field of ferns in the last four photos. Placements like these are not only visually interesting — providing both color and texture contrasts, as well as a sense of depth — but also show how Iris domestica thrives in the company of other plants while being surrounded by their horizontal spread. Iris domestica emerges from the ground on a single stem even among such plants, then splits into separate branches with multiple smaller stems (pedicels) hosting clusters of flowers — or inflorescences — that will all stand tall against their backgrounds as long as the flowers continue blooming.
“There is a speckled Asian irid that offers something of an analog to the American tigridias. The old botanical name for the plant is Pardanthus (‘leopard flower’). In the South these rich orange, purple-spotted blossoms have long been familiar as blackberry lilies, for the round, black seeds that persist clustered like blackberries after the fat pods open. Most garden literature refers to these perennials as Belamcanda chinensis, a Latinized version of their Asian name, balamtandam, and their home country, China. Recently, however, DNA-wielding botanists have assigned this distinctive plant the more pedestrian title Iris domestica.
“This flower was once common in gardens, but is now more often seen as an escape, growing on damp, acid soil. Like many other deserving plants, this easy-growing irid has yielded its place to more obvious blooms. Jefferson had it at Monticello, where he knew the colorful blossoms as Chinese ixia.
“The ephemeral flowers, appearing on slender stems above short fans of matte green foliage, continue over a long summer season. After the pretty flowers fade, the capsules enlarge to form the handsome ‘blackberries,’ which persist over winter and as cut decorations for autumn vases. The fleshy roots develop offsets that may be divided for increase, and the seeds, when sown, often flower the first season.
“In addition to the common purple and orange of the wild Iris domestica, nurseries provide a pale yellow selection, ‘Hello Yellow,’ and several hybrids with the Mongolian I. dichotoma.… Usually sold as pardancandas or candy lilies, they come in a wide range of exotic, warm-colored pastels. All grow readily on damp ground and make showy, but short-lived perennials. They grow easily from seed and mix cheerfully in borders of white phlox, yellow daylilies, or blue mistflowers….”
Across those years, I experimented quite a bit with rendering their colors in different tones, varying white balance to demonstrate how that shifts orange and yellow between warmer and cooler shades, and isolating the flowers on black backgrounds to show off the structure of their petals, stems, and leaves. Each new batch of the plants gave me an opportunity to try new photographic treatments but also to learn more about them, as I uncovered fascinating stories about how they were introduced at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello gardens in the early 1800s; how their scientific name changed from Belamcanda chinensis to Iris domestica just twenty years ago; that they were determined to be members of the Iris family and are not lilies at all; that there are cultivars whose appearance contradicts the common names Leopard Flower and Leopard Lily by having eliminated the dark spots that established the plant’s “leopard” nickname to begin with; and — from the Scott Ogden book excerpt above — that Iris domestica behaves as an escaped plant impervious to human intent to constrain its spatial growth as it ventures out beyond any borders. This last point is evident in how I’ve seen the plants make their way around Oakland, from a couple of defined clusters at the boundaries of several garden pathways that I encountered in 2022, to randomly appear in new locations from one year to the next.
One of its cultivars — Iris domestica ‘Hello Yellow’ — made its debut at Oakland just this year, appearing in this memorial scene as a crowded mass of flowers whose density increased as the summer went on:
I was out photographing daylilies on the morning I came across these, and almost passed them by because from a distance they looked like yellow daylilies, which I’d already photographed abundantly. Once I realized they were an Iris domestica variant — the flower shape reveals their identity — I spent plenty of my shoot time photographing these from various distances and angles to study their characteristics and observe more about how different they are from the plants that produce spotted orange flowers. Over this post and the next three, then, we’ll look at two sets of photos featuring plants with orange petals and leopard spots, and two sets of photos featuring Hello Yellow, while we explore their botanical similarities and differences in some detail.
June and July are peak bloom times for most Iris domestica variants, and in the past, I’ve shared their photos during the summer — but I held off this year to capture the plant’s full growth and reproductive cycle from buds and blooms, to seed capsule generation, then finally to the production of “blackberries” represented in the “Blackberry Lily” common name.
The first five photos below this paragraph show the orange-spotted variant during its blooming period (I took these photos toward the end of June), where even here you can see some fully opened flowers, some that have not yet opened, and a few whose flowers have twisted into the tight spirals that are one of Iris domestica’s distinctive features. This range of development states is common to many flowering plants and represents a timed blooming that occurs sequentially over several days to present multiple opportunities for visiting pollinators. The flower twisting that Iris domestica produces, though, is quite uncommon, and represents a transitional stage for this plant, where the flower is closed to pollinators because of its reduced visibility. The twisted flower — which is quite stiff to the touch — also serves as a protective mechanism for the seed packet that will grow to eventually push the desiccated flower off the stem.
By the middle of July, the same plants have entered the second stage of their lifecycle, where all of the flowers have been replaced by seed capsules. While not especially photogenic (three photos seemed like enough to show this stage), the capsules are botanically and biologically significant, as their blackberries are growing inside. Some of the capsules are quite large — up to an inch in length — and as fat as a thumb. The third photo emphasizes their size, but also shows a tiny “pin” at the top of each one, from where the twisted flower has completely dropped off. The green capsules continue to grow for several more weeks, through the end of summer and into early fall.
Fast forward to October (I took these photos just last week, on October 6), and now we can see what has happened since the seed capsules have dried up, split open, and gotten discarded: the berries of Blackberry Lily fame appear as clusters at the ends of many stems, somewhat protected by what remains of the capsule and the dried leaves where the flowers once extended from the stems ends. The berries will be picked up by flying seed dispersal agents like birds, or scattered by the wind, or brushed off the plants by humans or other animals passing by — to find their way into the ground and enable the plants to spread into their next seasonal cycle, taken root and germinating wherever environmental conditions are suitable.
Here in the Southeast, the appearance of Iris domestica berries is one of the first indicators that autumn has arrived, even before frosty temperatures kick in and other plants, trees, and shrubs start producing the colors of fall. And for those of us already thinking ahead to the upcoming winter holidays, the contrasting blue-black colors of the berries surrounded by yellow-gold leaves might trigger early thoughts of Christmas decorations, especially Christmas picks and sprays whose designs are often based on the shapes and colors of plants like Blackberry Lilies, and whose cuttings fill our mantles, windows, tables, and vases from November until the new year.
“The earliest varieties of irises grown and appreciated by gardeners in the 16th and 17th centuries were likely wild hybrids between Iris pallida, the source of lavender pigments, and I. variegata, the source of yellow pigments. Early collectors gave them various names, some pawned off onto botanists as species names like I. amoena, I. squalens, and I. neglecta. Each represented a relatively distinct color group, but the variation seen between clones was highly suggestive of their hybrid constitution. These seed-grown bearded irises were variously distributed across European gardens from the mid-17th century on. It wasn’t until the 1820s, when Parisian nurseryman Paul de Bure raised and named hundreds of seedlings, that the movement to popularize bearded irises gained a footing; ‘Buriensis’ (c. 1822) was his first introduction….
“By the 1870s the bearded iris fascination had crossed the English Channel, and early enthusiasts like Peter Barr were leading the production of new varieties in the British Isles. It was in the 1890s that many breeders, churning out dozens of new varieties each year, began to wonder if they’d reached the limit of the bearded iris’s potential. One of these was Sir Michael Foster, a professor of physiology at Cambridge and by all accounts among the most esteemed iris connoisseurs of his day. Foster grew and experimented with all irises, including oncocyclus irises from the Mideast and spurias….
“The American interest in bearded irises originated with diploids. Bertrand Farr, a music shop owner from Pennsylvania, imported Peter Barr’s entire collection (over 100 cultivars) and established a nursery near Wyomissing in the early 1900s….
“As America was catching the initial round of bearded iris fever, a schoolmaster from Godalming, U.K., was feverishly making crosses of his own. William Rickatson Dykes is the undisputed godfather of the genus, a position he earned partly through his association with Sir Michael Foster, a friendship begun at Cambridge while Dykes was a student there. Upon Foster’s death, Dykes inherited, by way of a mutual friend, copies of his predecessor’s notes and garden records, and like Foster, he bravely ventured into all sorts of deep and muddy waters with his experimental crosses between diploids and tetraploids and dwarf and tall species….
“Dykes traveled extensively to document species in the wild and collect them for horticultural evaluation; in his short breeding career, he introduced 34 cultivars, most in the early 1920s. Dykes died following a car accident in 1925. Two fitting tributes marked the next year: his wife, Katherine, introduced the yellow iris that bears his name, and in June 1926 the British Iris Society created the Dykes Medal honoring the most outstanding variety of the year — an award still coveted by breeders worldwide.”
Morning’s sudden and extravagant green seems to suggest the higher whiter waves of the air, what moves through the flurry of these first leaves, floating and falling beyond everything I am able to see.
Against that brightness, a flock of blue, a single yellow iris creaks on its shaft….
How persistently the eye resists the familiar, so easily finding itself content among its accustomed walls, the expected trees and avenues, that it fails to see them and will acknowledge only what has been changed or lost or taken away.
Hello!
This is the tenth of ten posts featuring photographs of irises that I took at Oakland Cemetery toward the end of April. The previous posts are:
In the ninth post in this series, I introduced a “self iris” whose standards and falls all demonstrated an intense, highly-saturated yellow color. As I described in that post, the ability of that iris to produce colors with such intensity originated in its genetic heritage (enhanced carotenoid production) as well as its growing environment (full day sunlight), which worked together to encourage the iris to produce more and more yellow-colored cells. In this post, we’ll look at some other yellow variations, so I’ve placed two representative samples to the right of the previous yellow self iris below to show their visual differences.
The irises like those in the second and third image above are located in older sections of Oakland Cemetery, neither kind receiving the same level of full-day sunlight as the first one. The partial sunlight they receive varies because they’re all located at boundaries between sun and shade, where nearby shrubs or trees filter out some sunlight at different times during the day. Both kinds get most of their sun exposure during the morning hours — something that irises like these are usually very happy about — with those like the second image spending most of their afternoons in full shade.
At the time I took the photographs — around mid-day — those like the second one were already fully shaded. That actually puzzled me a little, as I didn’t realize there were any irises that could do well with so little light, until I came across this brief note in Irises: A Gardener’s Encyclopedia by Claire Austin:
“In very hot climates, bearded irises will flower in shade. In Britain, the only bearded iris that managed to bloom in my garden in semi-shade was Iris flavescens, an old soft lemon variety.”
Though I couldn’t confirm it, I’d already concluded from my research on yellow irises that there was a good chance the shaded varieties were genetically related to Iris flavescens or its ancestors — because of their visual similarity to the yellows produced by William Rickatson Dykes and subsequent breeders. That such cultivars have been adapted to partial shade adds a bit of confirmation to that conclusion, especially since these shade-tolerant irises demonstrate another feature that enables them to adapt to lower levels of sunlight. Their falls — as you can see in the second image — don’t droop downward like the falls in the first and third images. Instead, they open to a horizontal or slightly upturned position and stay there while the flowers are in bloom. This enables them to capture additional sunlight (compared to the droopy falls), take advantage of fewer hours of sun shining on their petals, and still keep their photosynthesis humming along. Their ability to do so well with limited sunlight makes them ideal for their placement among the old memorial structures and stonework in the historical sections of the cemetery — where their heirloom quality fits perfectly with the garden design.
The final thirteen images below show different views of the blooms on a single iris plant, a very stately one positioned at the intersection of two walking paths in front of terraced walls, where it beckoned me to photograph it as well as its white and purple relatives in the background. This iris captures light midway between the well-sunned yellow self irises and the mostly-shaded heirloom irises, something that can be seen in its color production. The yellow saturation falls about midway between the other two cultivars; and its position in partial sun means that it doesn’t have to flood its petals with protective yellow carotenoids. It can, instead, retain and display one of its most significant features: carefully placed swatches of yellow near the throat of the falls, and similarly colored yellow striping edging those petals around an oval-shaped white foreground.
My camera, as it turns out, was somewhat mystified by this iris, and produced a RAW image that was mostly yellow — or at least appeared that way because there was enough yellow to create a color cast over the entire image. We end up with this color cast because there’s enough light (despite a cloudy sky) to over-saturate yellow and the color yellow fills so much of the frame in this close-up view.
A simple white balance adjustment — which removes yellow tint — gets us part way there; or, at least, starts to hint at the contrasting color combinations that are present in the falls. Now we can see that there’s pure white that was hidden by the camera’s interpretation.
This improved view of the colors in this iris’s falls influenced the adjustments I made next: I changed the color relationships to create greater separation between the flower’s yellow tones and its whites, then added some texture. The texture addition finishes the job, sharpening the contrast between yellow and white, and enhancing the fine vertical lines that run down the falls. Here are the three step changes showing the transition from the camera’s original interpretation, to the white balance adjustment, to the final version of this image.
Making these adjustments produces a cleaner and brighter image, but it also does something more important than that. It shows a flower that reflects the intentions of its breeders, who altered its genetics to produce the yellow and white contrasts, and the yellow edging, in the falls. The placement of this yellow edging reveals those intentions, because — as you can see in the final photograph — it’s so precise that it looks like it was drawn there, and appears not only on the tops of individual petals but is reflected or mirrored in the colors underneath the petals. Coloration like this is not likely an accident of nature for irises with decades of breeding history, so their photos should acknowledge the technological and scientific efforts, and examine that in the context of their use in formal or memorial gardens like those of Oakland Cemetery.
With that, we’ve come to the end of this project. Through ten posts, about 300 photographs, and around 10,000 words, we’ve done much more than just looked at pretty pictures of fine irises. We’ve traversed topics like how irises are classified scientifically and into color or pattern categories; how their appearance reveals their genetic history and breeding; and how they adapt to their environment by producing different colors and forms. We’ve positioned them across multiple cultural dimensions and explored how they fit into memorial or botanical gardens; how their presence relates to garden design; how photography, art, and poetry can help us see them better and learn more about them; and how they’ve been observed throughout history as symbols of life’s bounty, beauty, and endless complexity.
