What's Blooming in August?

iris norrisii, (seed from SIGNA seed exchange)

 
iris domestica, (seed from SIGNA seed exchange)

For most gardeners, iris ensata is the last iris to bloom in July.  In our garden, the first iris to bloom is iris reticulata which will often bloom the first week of March. Other than a few days, there has been an iris in bloom every day since early March this year. What I found last year was that iris domestica doesn't even start blooming until August. This year, not only is iris domestica blooming, but there's also iris norrisii blooming. 

 

iris norrisii, (seed from SIGNA seed exchange)

Iris norrisii is a wonderful addition to the late summer garden. The flowers are orchid-like in their behavior. What is remarkable is that the blooms open late in the morning, and remain open only for one day. The following day, the petals twist on themselves like a rubberband. Some of these plants might have dozens of blooms per stalk which means over a week of flowers in these incredible colors! 

iris norrisii, (seed from SIGNA seed exchange)

For anyone curious to know more about iris norrisii, there's a bit of information on the iris wiki https://wiki.irises.org/Main/Spx/SpxNorrissii  as well as the SIGNA website https://www.signa.org/index.pl?Pardancanda-x-norrisii. If you're keen to try your hand at growing species iris in your garden, join SIGNA and participate in the seed exchange!

iris norrisii, (seed from SIGNA seed exchange)

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Saying Goodbye to Frank

Image
  I lost a family friend last night. Frank Camps was a part of my life since I was a very young child. He was something between a godparent and an uncle. He came to nearly every birthday party I had in Miami. He and his son Frankie, and his wife Carmen came to every Thanksgiving and Christmas of my childhood. Frank was a chef. He cooked in more places than I could count. One of the places he cooked was a cafeteria for a pantyhose factory in Little Havana. He was a traditional Cuban cook, with a repertoire that ranged from plantains to Eye Round roast pork stuffed with carrots and ham. His black beans and rice changed my life. He taught me to love bread pudding and rice pudding. And without arroz con pollo, I probably would never have made it through college.  When I was probably five or six, he invited us over for Nocha Buena (a Christmas eve holiday, celebrated by Cubans with family and lots of food). Frank's feast involved a huge pig, roasted in the ground, lots of people...
Read more

Cold. January.

Image
  We're heading into the deep freeze next week. Life near zero is weird. I don't want to know the inside of my house this well. I can't really blame the cold though. I always get stir crazy after surgery. Something about surviving the surgical event makes me want to run off into the distance and just keep running. It might be escaping the hospital or being able to get up from the surgical table... I don't know. But once I am up and under my own power, I want OUT! This week I had a piece of skin cancer removed from below my eyelid. My face looks like I tried to hail a bus with my cheek. Not pretty. I thought going to a plastic surgeon would make me look cute. It said that in the brochure. And now it is wicked cold.  Years ago, we would relish time like this. Snow on the ground. No snowmobiles on the trail. Nights cold and black like ice. You can hear the trees creak. The snow is still fluffy, but after the weekend chill drops, I expect the snow to squeak. Warm sun over t...
Read more

Waking the Garden

Image
  hydrangea paniculata (not sure which variety) Walking through the garden this year, there are no bulbs up. Everything is still asleep. Last year was a very early spring after a very warm winter. We had iris reticulata blooming around this week. Not this year.  This year, all the plants have been asleep under thick blankets of snow. But there have also been plants that want to be awake early, like children on Christmas morning who refuse to sleep in. There have been plants who pulled the covers over their heads, refusing to admit that the sun has risen for the first time in four months.   comfrey leaves, melted into a thick mulch over the winter There are some plants that have chronic bed-head... like this gaillardia. It was stunning in the summertime, and all through the autumn it kept blooming until snow put an end to the show. Now its long stems are tangled up like tumbleweed. At this rate it's hard to imagine it will ever wake up.   gaillardia stems from last su...
Read more