It's here at last.....the FIRST DAY OF SPRING! The winter has seemed so long and cold this year. Even our little iris reticulata are late this spring. We normally see them peeking out of the soil in February, but this year they didn't show up until March. This is one of my favorite flowers not only for how beautiful they are, but because they are the harbingers of spring and are always such a welcome sight to our winter weary eyes.
These little beauties are natives of the Caucasus (Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Georgia). They bloom in different shades of blue and purple in late winter or very early spring. The flowers are said to have a sweet violet-like scent, but you have to poke your nose nearly inside the bloom to detect anything. Each flower has six petals, three "falls" and three upright petals called "standards" that are usually smaller than the falls.
They return each year and will sometimes naturalize and spread. We've had some of the clumps die after blooming for several years. They need a dry dormant period of time in the summer and since ours are in a large flower garden bed on the West side of our house, they occasionally get too much water. They require a well-drained soil and do well in raised beds or in rock gardens. Be sure and keep them at the front of your plantings since they only grow four to six inches tall and can easily be covered by larger plants.
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