Snake Lily Iris

The family Iridaceae is a very large one of perennial herbaceous herbs growing from a rhizome, corm or bulb. There are Iris varieties native throughout the world which offers a possibility of use in a native or woodland garden. They grow in mounds or drifts in rich soils; some prefer wet or marshy areas and even standing water.  Some can be grown as houseplants. Different varieties require light from full sun to full shade.  They propagate through root division or by seed.

The leaves tend to be long, strap-like and sword-shaped, overlapping at the base and oriented in one plane.  The flowers of lone to several blooms are carried at the top of a naked stem which can be as short as 3 inches in dwarf varieties to as tall as 3 feet.  The showy blooms are 6-parted with 3 often distinctly marked outer, spreading or pendent "falls" and 3 inner, erect "standards".  Iris are variously colored from blues to violets to yellows to oranges to white to even black and are prized as cut flowers in the perennial garden. The seeds are carried in a fruit capsule, but the division of rhizome or root is the best propagation method and to prevent overcrowding.  Some varieties require rhizomes to be at soil level, while others tolerate planting corms and bulbs deeper in the soil.

In general, Iris are deer and rabbit resistant. 

Quick ID Hints:

• Petaloid style overlapping petaloid sepals.
• Basal leaves are commonly fan-shaped.
• Leaves are 2-ranked and often flat.

To learn more about individual species, see the boxes below.

VIDEO created by Andy Pulte for “Landscape Plant Identification, Taxonomy and Morphology” a plant identification course offered by the Department of Plant Sciences, University of Tennessee.