Iris unguicularis

The Iris unguicularis are out.  They grow in a row along the bottom of a south facing house wall, in very light soil, which ought to suit them fine, and normally does, but this isn't a vintage year for them.  The plants themselves still look dishevelled, and while there are dense clusters of bloom at some points along the row, there are also stretches that are devoid of flowers.

The flowers are larger than on the dwarf irises I wrote about on 5 February.  They are the same shade of mauve that you get in crocuses, with a lustrous sheen.  There are three standard petals, shaped like elongated spoons, that stand upwards, and three falls that curve and hang gracefully downwards.  The overall shape is like the classic fleur de lis, though I believe that was based on Iris florentina, the source of orris root, not I. unguicularis.  The falls are marked with a creamy blotch at the base, striped yellow up its centre and flecked with purple.  Named varieties are available, though I don't have any of them.  You can find details of them on the excellent Avon Bulbs website.

It was a struggle when I first planted them years ago to get them to establish, and I had to replace more than one of the original plants before getting an entire row.  Even now there is one missing at the end, though I don't mind that now the space has been used for a shrub needing wall protection.  Some gardening writers do comment that they can be hard to get going in the garden, so it may not just have been me.

I wonder if their indifferent flowering performance this season is down to the weather.  They come originally from north Africa and Greece, so the snow, cold and persistent damp may not have suited them.  I know I'm not the only local gardener to be having a bad year with them, as the great and knowledgable gardener of the solitary 'Katherine Hodgkin' (see 5th February) lamented that hers weren't up to much this year.  She blamed it on the fact that the girl who helps in her garden had given them a very thorough tidying last year, which she thought they must have resented.  What to do about the old and tatty leaves is an issue that divides gardeners.  Lots of people say to cut the leaves down by half after flowering, to let the sun ripen the base of the plant as well as to make them look less disreputable.  I tried that one year, and got a pretty poor crop of flowers the next year so went back to my previous method, which is to go through them at some point in the summer pulling out brown leaves in their entirety, and trimming off any dead ends.  I'm pretty sure I never got round to it last year, though, what with all the extra work caused by the previous winter's damage.

They used to be called Iris stylosa, worth knowing if you happen to be reading about iris in any old gardening books.