Iris I Knew What All These Plants Are!

Hi guys, it’s me, just hanging out in the irises!

I know I said that I would be posting more about the flowers I had actually planted myself, but… here we are again, the blooms planted by the original homeowner Master Gardeners (OG MG’s? that’s how I’ll be referring to them from now on) are really starting to pop up.

Irises are interesting flowers – you can plant the rhizomes, and year after year, they will multiply underground to create more flowers. In the limited research I’ve done, it appears that we can dig them up and split them to promote more growth. The ideal time of year to do this splitting is in the “dry” of summer – which I’m not sure we get that here in Austin. We’ll look into that later in the year when we aren’t so focused on cleanup activities.

These specific irises appear to be White Cemetery Irises, which originated in Northern Africa, and were often used to decorate gravesites. An interesting thing I learned about these irises is that they have a tendency to overtake purple iris plants. In this phenomenon, the blooms will slowly transition from a lighter purple to a white flower over time.

Anecdotally, I was not surprised to learn about this “takeover” tendency because the buds, to me, looked like they had a very slight periwinkle tint to them. I had really been hoping, before the first bloom had opened up, that the bloom would look more like a Mary Frances Iris. Nonetheless, I am still happy to have a pretty flower grow in my yard.

The White Cemetery Iris bloomed early afternoon, which I noticed while I was on a work call. As soon as my meeting ended, I hopped out of my chair and cut it to keep at my desk.

If you want to learn more about White Cemetery Irises, here is where I got my information. If you like the vase the Iris now calls home, you can find a set of them available for purchase here.

-bbb