Stunning iris.

[Dorsetman]

After a long hard winter and a cold spring, suddenly my garden is alive. These irises come in such amazing colours, and big flowers too. I get four or five flowers in succession off each stem, and they are quite indispensible I think. Bred in France by a specialist nursery . I think not too many gardeners know them, and had to share with you. ( Actually I have a dozen or so different grex, these are just the first three to open.) Do enjoy !

[gardenguysorchids]

Lovely. I find them the a great transition from the spring bulbs to the June rose and perennial show. Love that they come in almost every color and color combination imaginable -- some down right gaudy. Yours are pretty.

[stateless]

beautiful, one of my favorite garden flowers when i lived up north, and for some reason we called iris, 'flags', thanks for sharing

[gardenguysorchids]

beautiful, one of my favorite garden flowers when i lived up north, and for some reason we called iris, 'flags', thanks for sharing

Ed, one of the reasons they were called flags was because they were always in bloom for Memorial Day and were a common flower used to decorate graves with. I remember as a child seeing large arrangements of iris and peonies decorating the graves of not only veterans but all deceased loved ones. In my area of Pennsylvania another name used for Memorial Day was Decoration Day and was a day that all graves were decorated with flowers.

[PaphMadMan]

Flag is a traditional English language common name for several species of genus Iris (especially Iris pseudacorus), and extended to several other plants with similar sword-shaped leaves, such as sweet flag (Acorus calamus). It goes back at least to the 1300s, looooong before the establishment of any American holiday.

These are lovely, and I bet they snell good too. But I have to admit a certain irritation whenever I see iris, because so many people can't tell the difference between an iris and an orchid. When I was collecting ceramics or china with orchid patterns, half the pieces advertised were actually iris patterns, and I recently ran across a book entiltled 'The Orchid Keeper's Son' with a picture of an iris on the cover. But I can't blame that on the iris.

[Dorsetman]

Flag is a traditional English language common name

In UK too, in fact as a child with an interest in gardening I only knew the name flag, not iris.

As to confusion between the iris and orchid families, it has occurred to me that the kind of mutation which would turn a petal into a lip must be very similar to the one which turns a plain petal into the complex structure of the fall in the iris ( these pictures are of Great Bearded Iris) and the part with the fuzzy bit on, rather like the ridges and crests on some orchid lips, is called the fall ). Of course it happens to all three, but then it has been shown that this is in fact a very simple mutation, and one or three depends solely at the point in the development that the mutation occurs. It is not Richard Dawkins own research but he explains it in quite simple language that even I could understand in one of his books.

[coeruleo]

i love irises! when i was a kid we had an old farm and my mom and grandma planted irises everywhere before i was born, we had tons! i really would like to one day have a yard filled with them again. especially the new red hybrids. all of ours were blues, some whites and yellows. the red ones are now deeply red. and much larger than the old wild 'red flag' they come from, which is a swamp plant, like yellow flag. we had those growing in michigan too, near the edges of swamps and lakes. i've seen listings for some that are 'reblooming' so i think you get a second flower stem in summer???

[Katherine]

Lovely Geoff, I really like the 2nd one.. My grandmother had lovely iris', and she too called them flags.

[Dorsetman]

One of the best places to see them in Europe is Monet's garden at Givenchy, near Paris (Monet the artist, as in the waterlily series, etc ). That is a quite different style of gardening, no grass , just "allees" of flowers, but very intensively gardened, they change the plants three times a year. But an absolutely stunning display of colour all the time. The are big on irises in June. Also here is the famous water garden - all the waterlilies, and the Japanese Bridge. Worth a special trip as the famous European Guide Book ( Guide Michelin) says.

[Susie11]

I love irises and these are stunning Geoff.
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