{"id":303,"date":"2005-04-17T10:53:07","date_gmt":"2005-04-17T15:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/192.168.1.5\/gardens\/gardenlog\/?p=303"},"modified":"2018-03-25T07:58:30","modified_gmt":"2018-03-25T12:58:30","slug":"incredible-irises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/plant-highlights\/incredible-irises\/","title":{"rendered":"Incredible Irises"},"content":{"rendered":"

My yard came with a tall, bearded iris<\/a>. The pale, golden-yellow flowers are old-fashioned in form and usually bloom in April. I think of them as my tax-time irises. They aren’t as fully-ruffled and showy as modern irises. They can’t even stand up straight, but have very wavy stems. But they multiply faster than I can give them away and bloom reliably every year.
\n
\nThese old irises fooled me into thinking I could grow bearded irises and every spring in the mid-1990s I’d send off an order for a dozen or more expensive named irises. Most would flower spectacularly in their first spring, but then fade out after a couple of years. So heading into the new millenium, I switched to heirloom roses.<\/p>\n

Zanthan Gardens History<\/h4>\n

April 11, 1995. The first bearded iris bloomed today near the greenhouse: pale golden brown with deep chocolate brown lines. Not a color I would have chosen, but I appreciate more than last year. The flower is large, gently ruffled but not frilly, and a shape that I like.<\/p>\n

March 12, 2002. The plant itself is as tough as nails. Last August, as usual, I divided a couple of clumps, replanted the largest rhizomes, and set the rest out behind the shed to give away. The people I promised them to never picked them up. In the meantime, the irises decided to plant themselves rooting on the spot and pulling themselve into the soil.<\/p>\n

Today, seeing them try so hard to survive, I took pity on them and I moved a dozen of the largest ones into a newly dug bed. I don’t expect them to flower this year, but at least they’ll have a chance to grow until I find new homes for them.<\/p>\n

NOTE: Last year, after higher than usual rainfall at the beginning of the year, these irises bloomed like crazy. Some of their stems can get 4 feet tall, and they curve back and forth rather than grow straight up.<\/p>\n

I’m trying to discover what variety this is. I’ll put up more photos as they bloom. Here are some possibilities: [2018-03-25. These links are broken.]
\n* Flavescens<\/a>
\n* Antigone<\/a><\/p>\n

Try this. Other photos look much more lemon yellow; mine, are golden yellow. Is that because of the heat in Texas?
\n* Historic Iris Preservation Society: Flavescens<\/a>
\n“Note: Flavescens is a wild collected variety, and was once commonly listed as I. flavescens. However it now recognized to be a naturally occurring hybrid and not a separate species.”<\/p>\n

* Old House Gardens: Flavescens gone wild in Kansas<\/a><\/p>\n

What do you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"photo:
2005-04-16. My tough bearded iris.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5699,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions\/5699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}