Goddess of the Rainbow
Of all the job assignments on Mt. Olympus, Iris had the best. She was the messenger of the gods, linking her bosses to humanity and flying on the wind from one end of the earth to the other. She was also the goddess of the sky, filling clouds with water and creating rainbows as she went on her journeys. A pretty good gig.
There are over 200 species of iris worldwide, but gardeners grow only a few of them. The big, bearded iris (sometimes called "flags") have been popular forever, and no wonder. They come in a rainbow of colors with blooming stalks up to 40 inches tall.
There are thousands of bearded iris hybrids, and the fall seed catalogs advertise their wild colors and
wonderful names. Before you know it, a box of rhizomes arrives in the mail and you have more than you know what to do with.
Iris are one of the toughest, most indestructible perennials. They grow in the baking Las Vegas desert and up in the Rocky Mountains. Sometimes you'll see their sword-like leaves sticking up around abandoned houses or growing in neglected garden beds. Nice people around here plant their extras in the traffic circles.
Grass and weeds like to sprout up through the clumps of roots, which doesn't bother them much but is frustrating to fussy gardeners like me. The only way to get the grass out is by digging them up and dividing (a hard, messy job) but one that should be done every few years anyway.
Bearded iris are tough, but I wouldn't exactly say carefree. They hog up quite a bit of valuable real estate in a city garden. But like peonies, when they bloom for a couple of weeks in late spring, you don't want to be away on vacation.
Dutch iris are different, and started from small bulbs planted like tulips. If you've ever ordered a "spring flower arrangement" from a florist, blue Dutch iris will be in there. They are really beautiful, even though they don't last long as cut flowers. They're hardy and bloom for years in the same spot. Another nice thing is the foliage dies back after they bloom (like tulips) and you can forget about them for the rest of the year. Unfortunately they don't multiply, but they don't have to be divided either.
As for this bearded beauty, once the flower is gone, the clumpy leaves hang around all summer, turning brown and ugly until you finally hack them back in September.
What would Buddha do?
And there's the "other" irises: Japanese and Siberian. These are favored by landscapers over the bearded variety. They form attractive clumps of grass-like foliage with blooms
rising on elegant stems that never need staking. They are nice for cutting. The flowers are much smaller than the gaudy bearded iris (some would say, not as vulgar) and once they're gone, the foliage still looks nice in the garden all season long, like decorative ornamental grass.
They also have that annoying habit of grass growing up through the middle, but since you seldom have to divide them, you just live with it.
