Iris is technically a genus of 260 species of flowering plants, but the name is also widely used as a common name for all the species. Apparently the name is taken from the Greek word for a rainbow, which is fitting for a flower with such a variety of colors. My favorite is a beautiful shade of butter cream yellow found in the garden, but they also come in the more common shades of purple, “blue”*, maroon, white, etc. You’ll often see blooms of “blue”, bright yellow, and white at your local flower shop.
Irises are perennial herbs (though don’t try using them to spice up dinner tonight!) with long flowering stems growing from a base of sword-shaped leaves. They come bearded or beardless (weird terms for flowers, I know). Bearded irises are constructed with three petals that grow upward while three other petals open away from the center. Kind of like a fleur-de-lis, which, not so coincidentally, was designed after the flower itself! The open petals sport a strip of fuzz or the “beard.” Though it usually looks more like a caterpillar than a beard. “Mustached” would even be pushing it. The variety that you find in the floral cooler are beardless and all the petals eventually open in full.
* I use “” marks because there is no true blue iris. They are all varied shades of purple, some cooler than others, giving the illusion of “blue”.
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