First Annual Abbeville Swamp Iris Seed Collection Project

By Gary Salathe

My non-profit, the Louisiana Iris Conservation Initiative (LICI), has a Louisiana iris restoration project underway with our partners, the Friends of the Palmetto Island State Park, at the boardwalk in Palmetto Island State Park near Abbeville, Louisiana. One of the project's goals is to increase the number of Louisiana species Iris nelsonii (common name Abbeville Red iris) growing in the swamp at the boardwalk. Another goal is that after using the bloom to verify plants as I. nelsonii, they could be thinned out at some point in the future and returned to the nearby Abbeville Swamp. Since this swamp is the only place in the world where this Louisiana iris grows naturally, any I. nelsonii iris originated from there and was collected at some point.

 Kent Benton, Forest Benton, and myself (left to right) in a clump of I. nelsonii on April 5th in the Abbeville Swamp.    Photo by Henry Cancienne

An Abbeville Swamp landowner invited a small group of LICI volunteers to visit it during early April 2023 to see the irises during bloom. Although we were excited by the irises we found, it was also disappointing to find no irises growing in huge areas of the swamp. The exact reason is unknown. What it is known that collectors have aggressively removed irises in this swamp since their discovery in the late 1930s through the late 1990s, sometimes without the landowners' permission.

This past June, Louisiana iris enthusiast, iris grower, and LICI volunteer Kent Benton donated hundreds of I. nelsonii iris seedlings for the Palmetto Island State Park iris restoration project. They are currently growing at LICI's New Orleans iris holding area. Kent donated seeds his nursery created through a captured breeding process which utilized I. nelsonii iris pollen he collected at the Palmetto Island State Park boardwalk in 2021 with the permission of the park manager.

Kent's donated irises will be planted at the park’s boardwalk this fall, but many will not be mature enough to bloom next spring.  Efforts are underway to solicit donations of I. nelsonii irises from iris collectors to increase the number of blooming irises at the boardwalk in April.

LICI's volunteer, Kent Benton, is seen collecting pollen from a few of the I. nelsonii irises blooming at the Palmetto Island State Park on March 23, 2023, during a visit to the park. He received permission from the then-manager of the park to collect pollen to use for producing more I. nelsonii irises to be planted at the boardwalk in 2024.

In April 2023, Kent collected more pollen from the irises at the boardwalk during the bloom season. Unfortunately, a late frost destroyed many of the flowers at his nursery soon after they were pollinated. We were hopeful that created seeds could be planted and grown out at the boardwalk in the fall of 2024 and they would all bloom in April 2025. Alas, mother nature had other plans.

Next, we proposed collecting seed pods from the actual I. nelsoniii irises growing in the Abbeville Swamp when they ripen in July to stay on track with having more irises to plant in the fall of 2024 at the park's boardwalk. We think that almost all of these seeds would be wasted if they stayed in the swamp since the percentage of Louisiana iris seeds germinating, growing, and surviving into mature plants in the wild is extremely low, especially of the irises growing in standing water.

The plan is for the irises from these collected seeds to grow in their natural environment in the Palmetto Island State Park boardwalk swamp, where the public can enjoy them while they bloom. But more importantly, after they are confirmed to be true I. nelsonii irises, they will be moved back into the Abbeville Swamp into areas where no irises are growing. In 2 1/2 years, we can return to the Abbeville Swamp with a much higher percentage of plants produced from collected seed than if seeds germinated independently in the swamp. 

The photo on the left shows the 36" tall I. nelsonii irises blooming in one of the more remote areas the LICI volunteers found irises on their April tour of the Abbeville Swamp. The same area is shown on the right in July after 4 1/2 months of weed and swamp plant growth. The dormant irises and their ripe seed pods were covered by 48" tall weeds and brush.

After receiving the landowner's permission, I did an iris seed pod collection expedition to the Abbeville Swamp on July 12, 2023. Unfortunately, it coincided with an extreme heat wave hitting the area. I collected sixty seed pods after four hours of tiring and dirty work in the scorching heat that involved whacking through brush and weeds to get to the irises and their seed pods.

Some seed pods collected on July 12th from the I. nelsonii irises in the Abbeville Swamp.

The next morning, Thursday July 13, 2023, during a presentation on germinating iris seeds I gave to members of the Acadiana Native Plant Project, some seed pods were opened, and the seeds were planted into one-gallon pots. I taught the attendees Kent Benton's method of germinating seeds in which he gets between a 70% and 90% success rate. The 455 seeds will be germinated and monitored by the group at their native plant nursery in Arnaudville, Louisiana.

Photo: Members of the Acadiana Native Plant Project are seen on July 13th planting seeds after opening the seed pods collected the day before at the Abbeville Swamp.

Later that same day, near Livingston, Louisiana, I gave Kent some mature pods to germinate the seeds. The next day he reported planting 465 seeds from the seed pods into pots. 

Kent Benton on July 14th after planting the seeds he was given from the Abbeville Swamp into containers.

 

On Friday, July 14th, the rest of the seed pods were opened, and 474 seeds were planted into one-gallon pots by staff and interns of the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program (BTNEP) nursery in Thibodaux, Louisiana. They will germinate the seeds as a joint project with Nicholls Farm. The farm is managed by the head of the Biology Department at Nicholls State University.

The Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program (BTNEP) nursery at Nicholls University in Thibodaux, Louisiana

 

 

 

 

The groups agreed to help germinate the seeds when LICI determined that the irrigation system used at its iris-holding area for their mature irises would put too much water onto them.

We are excited that a thousand or more of the very rare I. nelsonii plants will come from the 1,400 seeds planted into pots this week! I am very grateful for our friends and partners in this seed-germination project: Acadiana Native Plant Project, Kent Benton, and the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program in conjunction with Nicholls State University.

Tammy, an intern with BTNEP, is seen just before she covers with soil the 474 iris seeds she helped to plant into pots at the BTNEP nursery.

 

 

All seedlings that come from our combined efforts will be given back to LICI in about five months to grow out at our iris-holding area in New Orleans. They will be ready for planting at the Palmetto Island State Park boardwalk during the fall of 2024.

I'm hopeful that with more time available to plan a visit back to the Abbeville Swamp during next spring’s bloom, and with the permission of the landowner, of course, we may be able to significantly increase the number of seeds that we can collect next summer to farm out for germinating to boost the number of seedlings available for growing out even further.

The hoped-for outcome of all of this work by all of the groups that are part of this project is to have a couple of thousand I. nelsonii irises blooming at the Palmetto Island State Park’s boardwalk by the spring of 2025.

A group of civic leaders in New Iberia, Louisana, have begun organizing the inaugural Bayou Teche Native Louisiana Iris Festival for March 28th through the 30th in 2025. The festival will be based in New Iberia, but the last day of activities will take place in Palmetto Island State Park at the boardwalk to celebrate the restoration of the I. nelsonii planting there. The educational type festival will also have talks open to the public about this rare iris and the need to preserve its native habitat.

Alison Miller during her meeting with LICI at the Abbeville Cultural & Historical Museum & Art Gallery on Wednesday, July 12, 2023 in Abbeville, Louisiana.

Although awareness of the Abbeville Red irises at the Palmetto Island State Park will be elevated by the iris festival in 2025, the Vermilion Parish Tourist Commission has already extensively promoted the iris bloom at the park each spring. During a July meeting with the Executive Director of the Tourist Commission, Alison Miller, I committed LICI to helping the tourist commission get the word out about the iris restoration project at the park and to increase awareness of the Abbeville Red irises while they bloom next spring. She also said the tourist commission would help with marketing the inaugural Bayou Teche Native Louisiana Iris Festival. She said they regularly get people from all over the country come into the visitor's center and ask about the Abbeville red irises, especially during the iris bloom each spring.

I. nelsonii irises blooming at the Palmetto Island State Park boardwalk on April 5, 2023

Starting next spring, and each year, as all of the I. nelsonii flowers are blooming at the Palmetto Island State Park's boardwalk, iris experts will be asked to walk through the swamp to verify that each iris is, in fact, an I. nelsonii specimen. After the 2025 iris festival, the process will begin of returning many of the irises back to the Abbeville Swamp to be replaced at the boardwalk with a new crop of iris seedlings created using the prior year's seeds collected from the Abbeville Swamp. My hope is that the boardwalk planting at the park will become a clearing house for irises grown from seeds collected from the Abbeville Swamp to be confirmed while they bloom so they can head back into the swamp as full-size plants.

The Friends of Palmetto Island State Park have created a new page on their website. The page not only has links to Facebook postings and articles about their partnership with LICI and what the goals are for the project, but it also has a donate button for a fund they have set up so everyone can help to maintain, enhance and expand, the Abbeville Red iris exhibit at the boardwalk by donating. Here's a link to the page: https://friendsofpalmetto.org/partnering-with-lici The new donate button is at the bottom of the page, and any help will be greatly appreciated.

The LICI Facebook page can be found here.

You can email me at: licisaveirises@gmail.com