From “White Flags” in Garden Bulbs for the South by Scott Ogden:
“The first perennial irises to bloom in spring are several antique bearded types of dwarfish stature…. The ‘beards’ of these species are formed by long rows of feathery stamens, which mark the centers of the three outer petals, or falls. The inner petals, or standards, curve upward and inward to create the familiar fleur-de-lis seen as a motif in historic art and architecture….
“The most familiar of the historic irises in the South is the old white flag, Iris albicans. The Latin epithet, which translates as ‘off-white,’ was given to plants found growing in Spain during the mid-1800s. Although these irises are now common waifs in many warm countries, their original homeland appears to be on the Arabian Peninsula. Tradition holds that the Moors carried this iris wherever they traveled in conquest, planting the flowers as memorials on the graves of fallen Muslim soldiers….
“When Spanish colonists came to Florida and Mexico, they brought this Mediterranean flower with them and continued the tradition of planting them in cemeteries. These are now the most common irises in the South.
“The leaden flowers and gray, sword-shaped leaves of Iris albicans line paths and fill graveyards and vacant fields in March. They are often accompanied by early blue flags, thought to be variants of the same species: on some occasions a blue flower may be seen sporting from the side of an old clump of white I. albicans….
“For as long as Iris albicans has been in gardens, it has suffered confusion with a near relation, the pale white I. florentina (Florentine iris). This famous plant is the preferred source of orris, a fixative used in the perfume industry…. This iris is still raised for this purpose in Tuscany….
“The Florentine iris differs from Iris albicans in its taller, more open spikes of bloom. These carry papery bracts that often dry and turn brown by the time the flowers open. Although the blossoms are larger than those of I. albicans, they open sparsely and are less effective in the garden….
“Early garden writers described Iris florentina as a natural species, but botanists now regard it as an ancient hybrid. Like I. albicans, it has a blue variant. Although less common and prolific in Southern gardens than the early flags, I. florentina tolerates the climate better than many modern bearded irises. It appears occasionally in old gardens and may be seen blooming in April, several weeks after I. albicans finishes for the season.”
Hello!
This is the second of two posts with photographs of white irises that I took at Oakland Cemetery earlier this year. The first post is White Iris Mysteries (1 of 2), where I dug into how the names of white irises like these have evolved, from their historically early designation as Iris florentina through many intervening variations to the widely accepted name Iris albicans, then back to Iris florentina again. You might wonder why anyone would even do that research — I know I wondered! But as the picture became clearer, I realized I had unexpectedly come across an event that is rare for someone who is not a scientist, nor a naturalist, nor formally trained as a botanist to encounter: the reclassification of a plant species that was in progress, one not yet universally accepted by experts in the field.
While I’ve often encountered historically varying plant names and written about them here, the context was typically associated with past events: a plant got named decades or centuries ago based on its visual or environmental characteristics or its cultural significance, then got renamed subsequently as more information became available through additional exploration, discovery, and scientific analysis — all stemming from the way knowledge advances in concentric circles or connected spirals rather than in a strictly linear fashion.
For my purposes here, identifying a plant and researching its name changes provided a way to develop a partial and condensed story suitable for writing about on a blog — as opposed, say, to the entire chapters in botany books that might be devoted to seminal events where nomenclature changes occurred. The identification served me as an anchor for a story, that anchor pointed toward other names and other threads I could explore, and I’d pick a few of those threads to pursue and write about them here.
What we have with Iris florentina is a little different than that: the kind of anchor I’m used to launching my research from has been replaced by a contemporary rather than historical event, and it’s just unfolded recently. Its recency is reflected in the excerpt I included at the top of this post — which shows that when Scott Ogden published his book Garden Bulbs for the South in 2007, the plant commonly observed as a White Flag or Cemetery Iris in the southeast could have been either Iris florentina or Iris albicans.
The author goes into a lot of detail (part of which I excerpted last year to support my original identification) about what allegedly separates the two species, encompassing historical understanding of their visual and structural differences — which are now believed to reflect variations based on the plants’ propagation under different growing or overall environmental conditions. That section of his book would have to be rewritten now to accommodate how Kew Plants of the World Online has collapsed the two species into one by treating Iris albicans as a synonym of Iris florentina rather than a separate species. But that part of the story can’t yet be fully told: what I uncovered in the first post establishes a marker reflecting the recent reclassification, something I plan to take another look at when — as is likely — I photograph these white irises again in 2027 and can assess how widely accepted Kew’s reclassification has been, or if the debate “rages on.”
Stay tuned!
Thanks for reading and taking a look!
