IRIS PALLIDA
At this time of the year, the number of plants in the average northeastern garden that still look good is small. Some of the roses have nice hips, the barberries sport brilliant fruits and, of course, the evergreens provide excellent structure. If you have roses-of-Sharon, the seed heads are looking their best right now. But there is also one lovely dark horse entry in the late fall beauty sweepstakes–Iris pallida ‘Variegata’.
There are literally thousands of iris on the market, including species and hybrids. By combining tiny little spring bloomers like Iris cristata and reticulata with later blooming species like Dutch and Siberian iris, and, of course, the tall bearded iris, you can fill the garden with color and elegance through early summer. By investing in some of the newer reblooming bearded types, like the white ‘Immortality’, you can keep the show going, with iris in bloom, on and off through the fall. On a recent walk I saw some tall, yellow-flowered rebloomers strutting their stuff in mid November. It is a little hard to get used to seeing iris blooming along with the last of the mums, but in the right setting the plants look lovely.
I have come to a real appreciation of Iris pallida ‘Variegata’ only recently, when I saw it planted en masse in a friend’s New England garden. The flowers are pale blue and usually appear sometime in May, depending on your climate. In size, they are somewhere between Dutch iris and the tall bearded varieties. The leaves have the long, strap-like configuration that is typical of iris in general, but instead of the medium to dark green of ordinary iris, they bear contrasting stripes. I was already familiar with ‘Argentea’, a variety with silvery-white stripes, but my friend had ‘Aurea,’ with elegant golden yellow stripes. English plant expert Martyn Rix writes that sometimes the two varieties may not be particularly distinct from each other. “In practice,” says Rix, “one tends to see a whitish-yellow form.” Leaf colors, like flower colors, may be subject to variations depending on climate and soil, but the ‘Aurea’ in my garden has a definite golden cast, as opposed to the ‘Argentea, which has no yellow in the contrasting stripes.
Iris pallida is native to the southern Tyrol region of Europe and has been cultivated for millennia. The generic name, “Iris” comes from the ancient Greek goddess of the rainbow, who was also a handmaiden to Hera, the queen of the gods. Linnaeus gave the name to the genus because of the multitude of iris flower colors. The species name, “pallida,” means “pale” for the generally pale colors of the flowers. Sometimes Iris pallida is also known as “sweet Iris,” presumably because its fleshy roots or rhizomes are one of the primary sources of powdered orris root, which has long been used as a fragrance fixative in perfume making.
Mrs. Maud Grieve, writing in her 1931 book “A Modern Herbal,” suggests that Iris pallida was introduced into northern Italy in the early Middle Ages. Its charms and utility as both an ornamental and a medicinal/cosmetic ingredient probably helped it spread throughout Europe and eventually to the New World. American garden historian Denise Wiles Adams refers to an 1819 catalog listing for Iris pallida and mentions that the species is one of the parents of modern hybrid iris.
The tall, modern hybrids may be flashier, but Iris pallida has its own charm and deserves to be more widely grown, both in its green-leafed and variegated leafed forms. I had one ‘Argentea’ growing largely unnoticed in my upper back garden for years. I have remedied that situation now, moving the plant to a more advantageous location. Last summer I added a couple of robust ‘Aurea’ plants to my lower back garden. Since the flowers are fragrant, I put the new ‘Aurea’s near the back walkway. They are in an especially well-drained bed. With any luck they will be happy, never experience the savage cruelty of the dreaded iris borer and grow large enough to divide in a year or two.
Ironically, the green-leafed Iris pallida is less available than its variegated kin. One variety, ‘Dalmatica,’ has green leaves and darker purple flowers than the species. It will be available in the spring from Willow Bend Iris Farm, 2331 J Road, Grand Junction, Colorado, 81505, (970) 263-4138, www.willowbendirisfarm.com. Buy the gold or silver variegated versions from Siskiyou Rare Plant Nursery, 2115 Talent Avenue, Talent, Oregon, 97540; (541) 535-7103, www.siskiyourareplantnursery.com