Flower gardens are so pretty, but I don’t have time to do much. One solution is to put in perennials, so my irises are blooming.
Here in the Ozarks, irises have been a popular flower for decades or longer. Lots of them in a wide variety of colors got planted. Like flowers do, these set seeds.
The result is wild irises. Usually these are near some old home site or along roads.
In the guidebooks irises are listed under blue. Wild irises around here are usually pale yellow and smaller than the garden grown ones.
My irises are blooming in mostly blues and purples. Some are yellow. One is white. A friend was separating her irises and passed on the rhizomes to me, so the colors are whatever came. It doesn’t matter as all of them are lovely.
The hummingbirds visit the flowers several times a day. Perhaps they find a meal. Perhaps they pollinate the flowers. Later the flowers will leave behind a few seed pods.
So far, the daffodils, the surprise lilies and the day lilies are happily spreading around the yard and into the woods. Interestingly, the orange day lilies never set seeds, yet still spread all over along the roads. My yard day lilies were dug up by the road grader one year. Their patch has doubled in size in spite of being mowed both by the mower and by the deer.
Although wild irises could be considered an invasive species, they, like the daffodils and ox eye daisies, are here to stay. Therefore, I will stop along the road while the irises are blooming to complete the set of pictures of irises for my botany project.
After the irises are done blooming, the blackberry lilies will open. Like the irises and the daffodils, these escaped from home gardens probably a century ago. We are a country of immigrants.
“Exploring the Ozark Hills” has several Ozark wildflowers among its essays.
