A lovely violet colored bearded iris, complete with orange beards.
Bearded Iris are one of my favorite flowers. They grow in almost any soil, whether dry or damp. They thrive without attention, for years at a time. At my grandma’s there was a couple of clumps growing out behind some out buildings. No one could recollect who had planted them out there, and though the clump was growing on top of itself, still it grew. Grew and bloomed, with lovely blue flowers.
When I first moved to this home, I ordered up a bunch of iris from a garden supply catalog. I also ordered a set of mixed iris and a set of cotton candy pink iris. Eighteen bulbs in all. They came in the fall, just as the first snow was settling on the ground.
I planted them in my garden, hoping for a rainbow of colors come spring.
That first year, nine of the mixed colored ones bloomed. I had an assortment of yellows and purple/white ones. Lovely, but non of the colors I had hoped for. Only half of the pink ones came up, and I called the company for replacements — which never came.
Then next year, they did better, but it was then that I discovered that the cotton candy pink ones where not pink! They were a lovely shade of peach. Something I never would have ordered, and still, of the three that had grown, only two bloomed.
That fall, I had to move the iris. I was glad I had noted which plants were which colors, so I could replant them in clumps. Upon digging the iris, I discovered that my 18 original bulbs (minus those that never grew) had turned into 150 bulbs! In just two seasons…
When I replanted, I carefully clumped the colors I was sure of, and placed the mystery bulbs along one edge. There where two colors of yellow, a rich gold with brown beards and a smaller light yellow with yellow beards. The purple ones and the peach ones. This spring, the dark gold ones never bloomed, and I couldn’t tell where they were suppose to be, but this purple, which I had never seen before, took it’s place.
