"Pay attention to the world." -- Susan Sontag
 

Tag: leopard flower

Iris domestica: From Summer to Fall (4 of 4)

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From “The Flowery Land” in Gifts from the Gardens of China by Jane Kilpatrick:

“It was during the peace and prosperity of the Tang period (AD 618-907) that the Chinese people first really had the security and leisure to devote themselves to gardens and to the cultivation of an expanding range of ornamental plants. In addition to the peach and the apricot, several other flowering trees became popular, although this was probably as much due to their mythological attributes and practical uses, as to their flowers and handsome shapes….

“Shrubs seem to have been uncommon in gardens before the seventh century, although Weigela florida was sometimes used as a hedge plant, but references to the beauty and flowering season of magnolias, daphnes and hibiscus indicate that these very attractive plants were being brought into cultivation by this time. Herbaceous peonies (Paeonia lactiflora) were already favourite ornamentals, as were annuals such as the Chinese Pink and the Chinese Aster (Dianthus chinensis and Callistephus chinensis); but many plants grown as ornamentals today, such as the Tiger Lily (Lilium lancifolium), the Leopard or Blackberry Lily (Belamcanda chinensis) and daylilies, were still principally grown for their medicinal rather than their decorative qualities.”

From “The Story of the Fire Lily” in Someone Cares: The Collected Poems of Helen Steiner Rice by Helen Steiner Rice:

The crackling flames rise skyward
as the waving grass is burned,
But from the fire on the veld
a great truth can be learned…
For the green and living hillside
becomes a funeral pyre
As all the grass across the veld
is swallowed by the fire…
What yesterday was living,
today is dead and still,
But soon a breathless miracle
takes place upon the hill…
For, from the blackened ruins
there arises life anew
And scarlet lilies lift their heads
where once the veld grass grew
And so again the mystery
of life and death is wrought,
And man can find assurance
in this soul-inspiring thought,
That from a bed of ashes
the fire lilies grew….

Hello!

This is the fourth of four posts with photos of Iris domestica, and the second post with photos of Iris domestica ‘Hello Yellow’. The previous posts are Iris domestica: From Summer to Fall (1 of 4), Iris domestica: From Summer to Fall (2 of 4), and Iris domestica: From Summer to Fall (3 of 4).

I took the photos in the galleries below at Oakland Cemetery on June 21 and July 17, so they show the plant’s transition from its primary blooming period to the second phase where it produces seed capsules. You can see this transition about halfway through the galleries, starting with the photographs of the capsules, which show how this cultivar maintains quite a few flowers even as it starts generating seeds. When I went back in October to photograph the blackberries Iris domestica typically produces that I showed in the first post, however, only the orange-spotted variety had blackberries; those of Hello Yellow had already been dispersed. Together these characteristics suggest that Hello Yellow may have a more condensed reproductive cycle — moving from flower to capsule, blackberry development, and seed dispersal over a shorter time frame — but that could also reflect different environmental conditions, or simply that Hello Yellow was new to Oakland this year and may still be establishing its own rhythms.

The two varieties’ overall growth pattern is also quite different. The first two photos below show a typical group of orange-spotted Iris domestica, which produces fewer plants in any given location that tend to be spread up to a foot apart. This more solitary arrangement may indicate that the plant has evolved to disperse over wider areas — something that’s closer to its wild or native origins — which I observe by finding these orange flowers scattered throughout Oakland. Hello Yellow, on the other hand — as shown in the second two photos — has been bred to produce plants that grow in compact masses: the number of flowers and leaves in any square foot of the garden leaves little space between them as each plant produces crowded clusters of flowers. While both plants will present opened and unopened flowers while they’re blooming, these photos illustrate how differently they’re arranged, from a handful of flowers on each orange Iris domestica stem to Hello Yellow having so many flowers per stem that it’s hard to count them individually.

Because of these distinct growth patterns, the orange Iris domestica appear throughout Oakland as transitional plants marking the boundaries of roadways and blending among other plants, where their bright orange flowers draw your eye toward them and their immediate surroundings. But as we can see from this photo, Hello Yellow, by contrast, produces densely packed leaves topped with bright yellow flowers that are visible from a long distance, making them integral components of a memorial scene:

These Hello Yellow cultivars are growing in one of the many raised sections of the cemetery, about three feet above the roadways that surround it (a very handy position for photographers), and constrained on all sides by a stone wall. When you face that particular plot, you first see the low, soft textures and colors of Lamb’s Ear, which allow shorter memorial markers to remain visible even as Hello Yellow consumes more territory but doesn’t displace the smaller plants. Hello Yellows grow abundantly behind the Lamb’s Ear bunches, where they come close to matching the height of taller gravestones, as well as those in the background, but don’t detract from them visually.

Arrangements like these are not accidental: it’s apparent from their visual characteristics that Oakland’s landscape designers chose these plants intentionally, to provide different visual layers to the scene as time passes and to blend these plants with the immovable parts of their surroundings — like the memorial stones and even the remains of an old tree trunk whose dark colors provide additional contrast for the scene. Given its origins in seventh-century China (as explained in the excerpt from Gifts from the Gardens of China above), Iris domestica (in all its forms) seems especially appropriate for historical garden settings like this, but we’ll have to wait until next year to see if Hello Yellow takes after its orange relative and ventures beyond its present borders.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

Iris domestica: From Summer to Fall (3 of 4)

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From “Belamcanda” in Perennial Gardening by Michael Ruggiero: 

“Both species in this genus (also called leopard flowers) are native to China and Japan. B. chinensis is becoming popular in this country as an ornamental, for its shiny blackberrylike fruits as much as for its orange-spotted flowers; once finished, the flowers twist up tightly….

“B. flabellata ‘Hello Yellow’ is a wonderful smaller (10-inch) cultivar with the typical blackberrylike fruit….

“Both are fairly easy to grow and are unusual additions to summer and early fall flower borders. Group several plants together to get a telling display. Blackberry lily grows best in full sun positions, in well-drained, reasonably fertile soil…. Planting may be done in spring or fall, but newly planted stock should be protected with a winter mulch. Propagation is most satisfactory by seed sown in spring, either out of doors or indoors at about 70-80ยฐ F. Germination will take 2-4 weeks….

“Some gardeners prefer to divide the rhizomes in spring or early summer. Iris borer may attack the rhizomes with devastating effect; dig and destroy as soon as damage is seen; do not compost the foliage to prevent overwintering of borers. Leaf scorch causes an unsightly browning of the irislike leaves. Do not deadhead, or the attractive black glossy fruits will not form. Self-seeding is not a problem.”

From “Lodestone” in Of This World: New and Selected Poems 1966-2006 by Joseph Stroud:

I lie in a hammock in the slow hours
of a summer day, summer at last
in the high country, summer in the air,
in the light, in the poems I’m reading,
poems like deep jade pools of snowmelt
under a summer sun, poems like
whorls of agate. There’s a drift of pollen
through the forest, sifting through
the pines and cedars, a fine gold powder
drifting like the crushed ash of sunlight.
In the seep on the hillside the first
rein orchids appear, the night-blue larkspur,
leopard lilies….

Hello!

This is the third of four posts with photos of Iris domestica, where we’ll spend some time looking at one of its cultivars, whose appearance and growth patterns are quite different from the plants I shared in the first two posts, Iris domestica: From Summer to Fall (1 of 4) and Iris domestica: From Summer to Fall (2 of 4).

Since the origins of this cultivar’s name — Iris domestica ‘Hello Yellow’ — are hard to pin down, we can just enjoy the fact that the plant was given this happy little moniker. The excerpt I included at the top of this post — from the book Perennial Gardening by Michael Ruggiero, published in 1994 — refers to Leopard Lilies by their earlier name Belamcanda, calling the yellow cultivar Belamcanda flabellata ‘Hello Yellow’ and calling the more frequently planted orange cultivar Belamcanda chinensis. So we know that ‘Hello Yellow’ has been around for at least thirty years, before the two plants were subsequently determined to be variants of the same species and their names were changed to Iris domestica and Iris domestica ‘Hello Yellow’. The original Belamcanda names actually strike me as more precise than the newer ones — since Iris domestica could now be used to include both cultivars — but these things sometimes happen when plant names change over the years. Belamcanda flabellata ‘Hello Yellow’ even captures more of the yellow cultivar’s physical characteristics by not only including the color of the flowers, but also including its fan-shaped leaves — that’s what “flabellata” means — whose distinctive appearance you can observe in the first five photos in the galleries below.

In my first post in this series, I mentioned that Hello Yellow appeared to have been bred to eliminate the spots that had given rise to the plant’s “Leopard Lily” common name, a name that crossed the boundaries between plant life and animal life. Since then, I got to puzzling about that — as one does — which led me to wonder if there were cat-leopards that originally had spots but those spots had disappeared over generations and time. Researching that led me to this interesting article The Black Leopard Has Secret Spots, which describes how the ancestral remnants of spots on this cat’s sleek black coat can be revealed by photography, especially infrared photography.

If you look at the lead photo in that article, however, you can see that it doesn’t actually require infrared photography to reveal the hidden spots. Instead, the right lighting conditions — in that case, sunlight filtered through surrounding trees and shrubs — achieve a similar effect. With that in mind, I knew that I took some of my Hello Yellow photographs when the sun was behind clouds, which would have resulted in lighting a lot like that of the leopard photograph. Here, for example, is one of those photos…

… where you can find Hello Yellow’s spots if you look closely. Follow the petals of the frontmost flower from their edges to the center, and you’ll encounter what may look like bits of pollen, but these are actually spots whose color has been altered from Iris domestica’s original deep purple or black to a shade of yellow-orange that’s slightly darker than the rest of the petals. These color variations are only evident in filtered sunlight like this; you won’t see them in the photos that I took when the sun was out.

But there’s more! Here we compare Hello Yellow to the orange spotted cultivar and can see something else. Notice how spots are distributed among the flower petals on the orange blossoms, then take a look at those same sections of the petals on the yellow variant:

You will see, in this comparison, pale yellow circles and circular texture variations among Hello Yellow petals that are distributed in the same patterns as the dark spots on the orange flowers. These, too, are remnants of the plant’s original spotted appearance, where the plant’s colors have been altered through selective breeding to shift the overall petal color from orange to yellow, and simultaneously reduce the dark spots to shades of yellow. So, as it turns out, the common names Leopard Lily or Leopard flower still work for Hello Yellow after all!

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

Iris domestica: From Summer to Fall (2 of 4)

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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.”

From “Farm Gate” by Uys Krige in The New Century of South African Poetry, edited by Michael Chapman: 

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 domestica that 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.

Thanks for taking a look!

Iris domestica: From Summer to Fall (1 of 4)

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From “Blackberry Lilies” in Garden Bulbs for the South by Scott Ogden:

“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….”

From “A Poem About Icebergs and Planting” by Susan Ingersoll in The Backyards of Heaven: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry:

let there be
blackberry lilies,
starry mountain bluets…

let the cycle of renewal
rumoured at another season
be complete

now the earth will turn again
toward the light

let the bee balm return, and the bee,
and the honeysuckle
and the sun

these seeds are shiny black
like shot, messages
sent underground to the future,
that august should see…

belamcanda chinensis

in the name of faith in
the name of magic

Hello!

This is the first of four posts with photos of Iris domestica — a plant with many fun common names like Leopard Lily, Leopard Flower, Blackberry Lily, Candy Lily, Freckle Face, Butterfly Lily, and Fire Lily — that I took at Oakland Cemetery during the summer and early fall. I first discovered roving packs of Iris domestica at Oakland in 2022 (see Leopard Flower Variations), returned to photograph them in 2023 (see Iris Domestica, the Leopard Flower or Blackberry Lily (1 of 3)), and again returned to photograph them in 2024 (see Iris Domestica Fireworks (1 of 2)).

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.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

Iris Domestica Fireworks (2 of 2)

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From “Blackberry Lily/Leopard Lily (Iris Domestica) in The Illustrated Guide to Nature by The National Georgraphic Society:

“The Blackberry Lily spreads wide its distinctly spotted tepals (look-alike petals and sepals) as if to draw attention to its short-lived beauty, as each blossom lasts only one day.

“A native of China, the Blackberry Lily has escaped cultivation to become widely established in North America. Showy flower sprays appear in the midst of fan-shaped clusters of long, narrow, flat, medium-green leaves. Pear-shaped seedpods form in late summer. When ripe, they split to reveal a cluster of shiny blackberry-like seeds, the source of the plant’s common name; the spots, of course, lend another name — Leopard Lily. A species of a different genus also goes by the name Leopard Lily; Lilium pardalinum, native to California, has somewhat similarly spotted tepals that curl. Its range does not overlap with that of Iris domestica.”

From “Belamcanda” in The Gardener’s Guide to Growing Irises by Geoff Stebbings:

“This genus is native to China, Japan and northern India. The plants look like iris, with fans of quite wide leaves. Given a moist, humus-rich soil they will grow outdoors in temperate zones and should survive most winters, but they are not long-lived plants. There is just one species, B. chinensis, which usually grows to 60cm (2ft) when in flower.

“The inner and outer petals are very similar except that the inner ones are slightly smaller, and the flowers open flat, facing upwards. The petals are orange, spotted with red at the base, and are attractive but not showy. This plant is called blackberry lily because the seed pods open to reveal shiny black seeds.”

Hello!

This is the second of two posts featuring Iris domestica from Oakland Cemetery’s gardens. The first post is Iris Domestica Fireworks (1 of 2).

Here’s one of the images from the galleries below, where you can see some of the unique features of Iris domestica that add to its photographic charm but also serve important botanical purposes. As the flowers age, the petals fold and twist in on each other, forming a tight spiral that retains much of the color from the underside of each petal. This change may occur within a few hours of blooming, as Iris domestica flowers often open and close within a single day.

Coincidentally, they share this trait with daylilies — and their aging process is another example of flower senescence, as I described in one of my previous posts, Red and Yellow Daylilies. This is a complex chemical and biological process, one that enables the plant to conserve energy and retain water, as the spiraled flowers will consume less energy and require less water. The plant can then redirect that energy and water toward the growth of other flowers and stems.

In the classic iris book The Genus Iris by William Rickatson Dykes, the author describes the process for Iris dichotoma, a closely-related iris that exhibits the same behaviors:

“This Iris probably produces more flowers on each stem than any other Iris. The stem is much branched and even the branches often issue in pairs at the same point. Moreover from each spathe as many as five or even more flowers are produced in succession. Each flower, unfortunately, lasts only a few hours and often only opens in the afternoon… However, such is the profusion of flowers that there are usually four or six to be found open at once on each plant.

“Another peculiarity of this Iris lies in the fact that it does not begin to bloom until about the middle of August and then continues in flower for about three weeks or a month. Each flower as it dies twists up in a curious spiral and often falls off together with the ovary between which and the pedicel there is an articulation.”

Sounds complicated, of course, but here we don’t worry too much about chemical and biological mechanisms we don’t (yet!) fully understand. You can click the links above for definitions of the three key botanical terms, if you like, but the process (somewhat speculatively) amounts to this:

The aging flower twists in a spiral, possibly to help the plant conserve water and energy. The position of the twisted spiral at the top of the seedpods helps protect the pods from insect or weather damage, until the pods themselves begin to dry out and open to reveal black seeds inside (the behavior that led to the common name “Blackberry Lily”). The seeds are then distributed by any of several seed dispersal methods, including gravity, wind, rain, and creatures like birds or passerby people.

All this enables the plant to make new plants — so I can take pictures of them again next year. Plants are both smart AND photogenically cooperative!

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

Iris Domestica Fireworks (1 of 2)

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From “Perennials for Summer Bloom” in Sunbelt Gardening: Success in Hot-Weather Climates by Tom Peace:

“Blackberry lily (Belamcanda chinensis) is, despite its deceptive common name, actually a member of the iris family. Vigorous, healthy fans of leaves arise from a small rhizome that expands only slowly over time and grows to two feet tall before blooming….

“The valuable foliage is then embellished by open, branched flower stalks rising above the leaves, producing a succession of orange-and-red-spotted, six-petaled blooms. (Hybrids called candy lilies expand the color range to yellow and purples.)

“The effect is like slow-motion fireworks, but the show doesn’t stop there. Swollen seedpods develop through late summer and split open in fall to reveal berrylike clusters of shiny black seeds. These readily germinate the following spring, increasing the size of Belamcanda colonies.”

From “Blackberry Lily” in Lilies and Related Flowers by Brian Mathew, illustrations by Pierre-Joseph Redoute:

“This showy member of the iris family is very closely allied to the true irises and indeed will hybridize with Iris dichotoma to produce a remarkable range of intermediate offspring. Belamcanda chinensis is the only species in the genus. The flower, with its six equal perianth segments and three slender style branches, is in fact quite different in structure from that of an iris, in which the six perianth segment are separated into falls and standards and the style branches are flattened and petal-like. The fruits also are rather distinctive, with capsules opening to reveal large black seeds; hence the name Blackberry Lily used in some countries.

“Like Iris, Belamcanda produces a fan of flat leaves from a small rhizome and in summer sends up a branching flower stem from the centre of the leaf cluster. This stem can reach 2.5 metres in wild specimens, but it is usually much less than this in cultivation. Each flower is of rather short duration, but because there is a succession of them, quite a striking display is produced over a considerable period of time. Although individual plants are usually short-lived, seeds are freely produced and the young plants rapidly reach maturity. Belamcanda is a native of China, Japan, Taiwan and the Himalayan region….

“The root has been used to cure sore throats and fevers and is also recommended as an antidote to poisons, in particular the bite of a cobra.”

Hello!

I had never really thought of these flowers as “slow-motion fireworks” — as they’re described in the first quotation above — but, you know, the description fits. And it fairly well applies to my photos below of Iris domestica from Oakland Cemetery’s gardens, where these little delights tend to grow at the very outer edges of tree-shade, so pick up a lot of filtered sunlight or backlighting. The result is that they glow against dark backgrounds, and the camera does a nice job of capturing the flower petal highlights while keeping the colors and shapes of the stems and buds intact.

As is often the case with popular flowers, you can choose a common name for this one from a long list. Leopard Lily, Leopard Flower, or Blackberry Lily are frequently used, but you could also pick Candy Lily, Freckle Face, Butterfly Lily, or Fire Lily; or replace “lily” with “iris” and have a whole new set of names. They all reflect either the color pattern or shape of the flowers, or (for Blackberry Lily) the plant’s habit of producing fat seedpods that turn black late in the season. “Lily” has stuck as part of the plant’s moniker, though — as we all know, don’t we? — it’s actually an iris. Iris domestica is its proper current scientific name; but that’s a recent enough development in botanical history that the previous scientific name — Belamcanda chinensis — hangs around in a lot of botany or gardening books and other sources. I wrote about the name change history last year: see Iris Domestica, the Leopard Flower or Blackberry Lily (1 of 3) if you would like to read more about it.

With that previous set of photos, I also wrote about encountering these irises shortly after a long-duration high-wind thunderstorm had passed through the neighborhood, bending many of them to the ground. Some had obviously been broken or uprooted, with the flowers still intact, stems split like cut flowers in a vase. I wondered if they’d return this year, so was glad to find them — even as a less robust crop than I had seen previously. Then again, the presence of fewer flowers gave me a chance to capture singular stems and flowers against their shaded black or dark green backgrounds, so for The Photographer, that worked out nicely.

Thanks for taking a look!