A year of flowers #43: Mystery iris

 

Iris ????

Last year in late June, my neighbors Janet and Butch invited me out to the family farm, just south of Kamiak Butte, to look at some native plants before they cut the hay in that spot.  It sounded like Janet had seen some Iris out there, and they said if there was anything I would like to try to transplant that I was welcome to it, since cutting it as part of the hay every year is pretty hard on flowers like this.  The other plant they had was lupine, and in my experience it is pointless to try to move them, but iris can be moved.  The bloom was gone, but these had the slimmer leaves and color of I. missouriensis, so I dug a couple of clumps and planted them where there was no other iris--that way I'd know if that particular project was successful. 

When my other Iris missouriensis was blooming (see #30, May 18), I noticed that these had put up a bunch of leaves, but no bloom.  This is not uncommon when you move a plant, that it takes a year or so to get comfy and then it goes back to its former self.  Still, I was happy that they had lived.  Then a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that they were putting up blooms.  In the last week they bloomed and they're white.  Iris missouriensis is not white--they can be pale blue or purple, but not like this.  The other major hint that it isn't the same species is of course that it bloomed weeks later.  I made a bouquet of native flowers from the prairie for Janet as a thank you, and she took this photo of the flower.

There are not many white native iris species, it turns out.  The closest I could find is I. chrysophylla, which is native to Northern CA, and Western OR.  The veins in the petals are more pronounced, it seems, but it's similar.  There are other examples of species turning up in the Western part of the state, and having an echo population in the Palouse, which is the highest ground east of the Cascades (our elevation here is about 2600 feet). One possibility is that these irises are such a group.  https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/beauty/iris/Pacific_Coast/iris_chrysophylla.shtml

 

I know the official Whitman County botanist, and sent her an email today.  Maybe we have a new species.  I will go out to the spot where I got these in the next few days, and hopefully I will see others.  I will report back.

UPDATE 6/16/21

I heard back from Dr. Brunsfeld.  She said that it is indeed a Rocky Mountain iris, but that it is an unusual white blooming example.  I did return to the site where I had found it, and I realized that I was lucky to get this.  They must not have hayed the spot last year which is why I saw this then, but this year it was hayed as usual, and nothing but grass was visible.