Blue-flag Iris
- katemacquarrie22
- Jun 29
- 2 min read
PEI has showy wild plants that outshine any domestic blooms I can think of. One flowering now is the lovely Blue-flag Iris (Iris versicolor).
Blue-flag is a native perennial that can be found around damp areas, including roadside ditches and freshwater wetlands across the Island. Irises have unusual and complicated flowers that are usually described as having six petals. They technically don’t, and the true situation is far more interesting!
The larger, frilly, petal-like structures with purple, white, and yellow colours in the photo are sepals – parts that protected the flower when it was a bud. Sepals are usually green and leaf-like, sometimes cupping the bottom of a blossom (such as with Roses) or peeking out between the petals (as in Trilliums).
Green sepals help with photosynthesis, but Irises have decided not to waste valuable real-estate with such mundane activity. Instead, the brightly coloured sepals help attract pollinators, even more so than the three true petals seen at the eleven, one, and six-o’clock positions in the photo. Pollination is essential for seed set and reproduction; Irises invest extra effort to ensure success.
But the oddity of Iris flowers doesn’t stop there. You’ll see another purple-and-white, petal-like structure atop the sepals: this is the pistil, part of the flower’s female side. Many flowers have a single, inconspicuous, central pistil surrounded by the male, pollen-bearing anthers. Irises, instead, have another unique and beautiful adaptation.
Pollinators (mostly bees) are attracted to the petal-like sepals, land on a purple-and-white pistil, and continue down toward the centre of the flower where the pollen and nectar are. Pollen the bees were carrying when they arrived is deposited on the pistil. They then pick up new pollen from the male anthers at the flower’s centre before flying off.
In this way, Iris flowers reduce the likelihood of their own pollen landing on their pistils. While such self-pollination can be handy when there aren’t many pollinators around (and it does occur), cross-pollination is the preferred option for genetic diversity.
Irises are not only beautiful, ingenious, and useful for pollinators, but they can also help their environment. In addition to all the work the flowers do to set seed and create new plants, Irises spread by rhizomes. This allows them to form dense patches that both filter sediment from run-off and stabilize the soft, mucky edges of ponds and ditches.
In these ways, Irises have some similarities with Cattails, and they often grow alongside them. That’s useful to know because Cattails are edible and Irises are toxic. Fortunately, it’s easy to tell the two plants apart. Iris leaves will be either flat or have a slight ridge down the centre; Cattail leaves are D-shaped – flat on one side and curved on the other. One misplaced bite will tell you the difference: Cattails taste like cool cucumber while Iris will cause a burning feeling in your mouth!
Irises are beautiful, complex, and well-adapted parts of PEI Untamed!
