Tougher PCI Emerging On The East Coast

Kathleen Sayce, May 2024

This spring I heard from two gardeners on the East Coast. Each is successfully growing Pacifica iris in very different geographic areas:  Nova Scotia and North Carolina. 

PCI Fundy Blue clump in Gordon's garden, Nova Scotia

By success, I mean these gardeners have grown PCI for more than a few years, and began with seeds rather than transplants, and some of these plants have survived from year to year, flowering and setting seed. 

In Nova Scotia Gordon Tingley started with an Iris innominata x I. douglasiana seed lot from Society for Pacific Native Iris’s winter seed catalog, and with seeds from his prior garden in Portland, Oregon. 

In Raleigh, North Carolina, John Dilley began with seed from Parks Seeds, these PCI seeds were of unknown origin. 

One of John's PCI

In both cases, very few seedlings survived, and both gardeners focused on growing on the survivors, and their progeny.

John lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. North Carolina has all the summer weather traits that PCI dislike:  hot muggy weather, warm summer rain, old soils high in clay, with poor root drainage. Yet he has thriving plants. Muggy hot summers are usually fatal to PCI across much of the middle and southeastern areas of North America. 

Another PCI in John's garden

John had just one survivor from the original seed packet from Parks Seed, and a few seedlings from the F1 generation from that one original plant. Now he collects fresh seeds each year and sows them, letting nature do its worst on those seedlings; then he grows on the survivors He focuses on the few that make it. 

In the F1 generation of seedlings in John’s garden there was considerable flower variation from that first PCI. He plants surviving seedlings in the ground after year two, letting them live, or die, in pots for the first couple of years. He’s shared some transplants to Tony Advent, Plant Delights Nursery, to propagate for potential sale in a few years.

Gordon lives in Bear River, Nova Scotia. He protects his PCI in the winter garden with conifer boughs, and gardens on granite-derived soils. Drainage is good, nutrition is good, and the maritime summer climate is more moderate than further south. Winter cold is the key selection factor in this garden.

From PCI 'Wilder Than Ever', in Gordon's garden

Gordon’s garden routinely experiences -15 °F (-9 °C), which is much colder than PCI normally tolerate, as 10 to 15 °F  (-9 to -12 °C) is commonly fatal for most PCI. He has also seen cold blasts to -30 °F (-34 °C).  Bear River is at the northeast end of a large tidal complex with very high tides, the Bay of Fundy. Proximity to salt water helps moderate the winters, but cold is cold—those PCI are tough!

PCI Fundy Blue in Gordon's garden, Nova Scotia

More will be written about these gardens for Pacific Iris. This is the first good sign I have seen of nature working with gardeners to successfully produce both more cold winter and hot summer tolerance in Pacifica Iris in other regions of North America.

New sloping bed and fall transplanting

Kathleen Sayce

A multi-year planting plan is coming together for fall on a dune west of my house. It began four years ago with systematic ivy removal and suppression, and continued despite the pandemic. This summer, with ivy and blackberries suppressed, remnants of an old orchard were cut down and chipped. I left 4 tall stumps about 8 feet high for future vines. The site is finally ready to plant, with a nice pile of wood chips staged to spread out. 

I’ve been hoarding Pacifica iris plants for more than three years. These are a mix of unnamed vigorous seedlings, named cultivars, seedlings from same, and species seedlings—Iris tenax collections from various places in the Pacific Northwest, or color selections from Paul Rogers, who is working on named lines in a range of colors in this species. I also have a few pots of Iris innominata seedlings.

One of the stashes of PCI pots, waiting for fall

Other plants include Pacific reedgrass (Calamagrostis nutkensis), western sword fern (Polystichum munitum), several Ceanothus species and varieties, some low growing manzanitas (Arctostaphylos), and perennial wildflowers. 

The new planting area is on a sloping dune facing east, has a slope break (where the dune gets steeper) about ten to fifteen feet downslope. Ceanothus and manzanita will go in a meandering line along the slope break,  with grasses and ferns above and below, and irises in between in color patches, each plant about two feet apart. 

An unnamed yellow PCI with red and gold signal, ready to be planted this fall.

Columbine, bleeding heart, yarrow, broadleaf lupine, California poppy and other wildflowers will be planted or seeded over the slope. Fringecups (Tellima grandiflora) will go in shadier areas. This native saxifrage is a great filler in planters, with lime green foliage. 

As with most of my garden, this new area will get low to no irrigation. I will add compost and wood chip mulch as surface layers. By planting in fall, as the weather cools and rains begin, initial watering will be minimal, and thereafter, only in extremely dry hot events for the first 2-3 years. 

Dark pink PCI with gold and very dark signal. This group has PCI 'Mission Santa Cruz' heritage.

Gardeners often have angst-ridden thoughts about new planting areas, and I am no exception. Eik and deer spend a fair amount of time in my yard, and I worry that they will find all those new plants tasty, and eat them down, or so annoying that they pull them out. Rosemary falls into the latter category—elk regularly trample my rosemary, breaking down the branches. I prune them and reshape them; the elk trample them again. I may end up with rosemary near my house and nowhere else in the garden! A naturalist friend says elk are determined landscape engineers, and pull out or trample the plants they don’t want to make room for the ones they do.  

My goal is a colorful, low to no water slope of mostly native plants, with shrubs for the Spotted Towhees, and enough ground cover for white and gold crown sparrows and other ground nesting birds. We’ll see what the deer and elk think of this!

Salt-tolerant Pacific Iris, or Choosing Voles & Birds Over Cats

by Kathleen Sayce

Mowing the upper edge of the marsh along the Washington State U.S. coast on Memorial Weekend, I found a flowering iris growing among taller grasses. 

A saltwater-tolerant PCI in the upper salt marsh

Lest you think I was mowing native and/or sensitive salt marsh species, let me reassure you:  I was mowing ivy, gorse, and reed canary grass. The last is one of a group of big grasses with thuggish tendencies, and the first two are obnoxious weeds in many areas. These species grow along the upper edge of the salt marsh, and collectively tolerate salt water on the highest storm tides each winter. I dodged two native plants:  seawatch clumps (Angelica lucida, a tall carrot family wildflower) and edible thistle stems (Cirsium edule). 

Almost hidden in taller grasses, this PCI was a delightful surprise

This iris is a small, species-like Pacifica iris of unknown parentage which looks most like a PCI of unknown origin that I planted in the mid-1990s, though that plant has larger, wider petals and darker flowers.

Salt water covers this spot several times each winter on the highest storm tides—it grows in a saltwater inundation area. Iris tenax and I. douglasiana both live in salt spray zones along the coast. I will keep the taller grasses down around it, and see how long it lives here. The salt tolerance is a surprise. 

How did it get across the driveway and into the marsh? Voles are the probable suspects; they live abundant and prolific lives in the marsh and garden—and in our garage, cars, and occasionally, house. It is likely that a vole filled its cheeks with ripe iris seeds and dashed off across the driveway to stash them in the marsh.

Get a cat, you say. 

My reply:  I would rather have a garden with ground-nesting birds. 

There are two areas in the garden where Spotted Towhee and White-crown Sparrow nest. The adults pop out to complain when I mow nearby, and grow quite insistent if I weed too near nests, which tend to be under large clumps of Pacifica iris. Which of course means weeds grow unchecked in those areas for much of the summer, and that favors voles! 

What was your first flower?

Kathleen Sayce

There’s a theory that people who like plants and garden throughout their lives express that fascination at a very young age. It usually happens between ages 3 and 5, when we are avidly exploring the world. I know a birder who made that initial and lasting connection with another life form at age 2 (mallard duck), and wildlife biologists, ditto, ages 4 and 6 (rabbits and deer). 

A Pacifica Iris seedling in my garden, 2021

What was your first flower? Did that sense of connection change as you grew up?

I have a friend whose first fascinating organism was a pansy, at age 3. He saw a flowering pot at his grandparent’s house; his grandmother was a lifelong gardener. He picked it up, studied the plant, and was drawn in by the flower’s colors, complexity and petal shapes. He became a horticulturist, worked in well-known gardens and nurseries across the country, and now grows plants from all over the world, has a seedling garden where he grows dahlia crosses, and does amazing flower arrangements. Flowers became his life at age 3. 

For me, the fatally attractive flower was an iris, age 2. There was the snaky rhizome, creeping across the surface of the ground. It was so un-plant-like! The flower was stunning: standards and falls and shaggy beards in a fascinating asymmetry. The light shining through the purple petals was amazing. And the shape of the flower buds was simply entrancing. 

I now know this was a purple-flowered tall bearded iris, but to my young self, it opened up a view into the other half of the living world—plants. 

I wanted to weed out the grasses and study how it grew, but my mom disagreed. She said the flowers were old fashioned; she planned a vegetable garden in that spot. We had just moved to a new house, and the next year she did indeed put in a vegetable garden with pole peas and beans, radishes, carrots, zucchini, and an asparagus patch. I promptly began checking radishes every few days to see how the root developed into a round edible vegetable, but that’s another story. Suffice it to say my parents were not pleased to find the radish seedlings vanishing day by day. 

My love of that first iris flower morphed into a fascination with all things chlorophyllous, which led me into lichens, mosses, kelps, wildflowers, and eventually into Pacifica Iris. 

What’s your story?

Starting again with Pacifica Iris

by Kathleen Sayce 

When I began focusing on irises more than 20 years ago, I was eager to hybridize for deeply saturated colors and weather-resistant flowers and plants for my climate and soil, near the Pacific Ocean in southern Washington State.

Iris tenax flowering in the yard: not exotic, but thrives in our soil and weather

I ordered Pacifica iris divisions from several different growers, amended the soil in key beds, and planted these new starts. I also ordered seeds from the annual Society for Pacific Coast Native Irises (SPCNI) seed exchange. [Note: The December 22/January 23 catalog is about to go live on the SPCNI website, writing in early December 2022.] I made tags, started a hybrids notebook, and worked out a unique scheme for each cross. I started testing kitchen countertop paper chromatography solutions so I could check flower pigments in crosses. 

Then I sat back and waited to see how everything grew. Well, I actually kept weeding and planting and enjoying these new plants. No sitting back was involved.

What happened? Not what I expected. 

Iris tenax clump

First, jays, squirrels, and crows pulled tags every chance they got. I found tags scattered all over my yard, on the driveway, and even on the access lane hundreds of feet away. We had feral peacocks in the neighborhood for several years. They pulled tags, and plants too, if those plants were growing where they decided they had to have dust baths. 

Those same species all love fresh young iris seedlings, it turns out. Mesh covers help; I now put all my seed pots in mesh frames. 

Deer tugged seedlings out of the ground to check palatability. Repeatedly. This led to arguments with adorable spouse, who does not want a fenced yard. The deer were eventually followed by a local herd of elk, who eat everything remotely palatable and trample the rest. Adorable spouse still does not want a fence. 

The weather got in the way of making deliberate crosses. Strafing rain in March-April-May can do that. Even bumblebee-assisted pollinations suffer in hard rain. I tried putting covers over plants, but it is just too wet and cold most years for pollen to germinate. I might try a modified alpine house, open on the sides for good airflow, to control the moisture; though then I'd have to water. 

Heavy rain also damaged petals, especially on more recent, highly-frilled hybrids. Given that these tend to flower during mid-spring, which is often very wet, it became clear that I needed to shift to later flowering selections. I started to focus  on Iris tenax instead of hybrids in the Pacifica iris gene pool. 

Then I misplaced the notebook! It was a strong sign, I decided, that my iris activities should be limited to growing and enjoying. 

Years later, reading an introductory chapter on growing Pacific Coast irises by Adele and Lewis Lawyer, they stated that Pacifica iris do not like sandy soils. My garden has silty sand. Hmm. If I took them at their word, I would never have tried growing Pacificas! 

All I can say is I would have missed a lot of entertainment over the past several decades. 

Waiting for Rain on the West Coast

by Kathleen Sayce 

The astronomical calendar has rotated into autumn: Rain and cooler weather bring mushrooms, migrating birds and salmon, and new growth for many types of irises.  Here on the West Coast, it’s time to plan fall lifting, dividing, and replanting of Pacifica irises.

Wait for your plants to show fresh white roots that are at least two inches long. If you have access to irrigation water, water thoroughly a few times in September and October to help encourage Pacifica irises to break summer dormancy. Watering is needed only when replanting, and not weekly thereafter (unless it doesn’t rain for weeks and the soil dries out). 

Monitor weather for rain, and wait for the soil to dampen to a depth of at least six inches (or irrigate your garden). When new iris roots emerge, start planning times to rework and plant flower beds. Better yet, consider scheduling a planting party! Along the coast, this is usually October into November. 

Take time to replenish soil coverings (aka mulches), and amend soils with nutrients and carboniferous materials like compost, ramial, and biochar. Any time you dig a plant hole, add some carbon, work it into the hole, and then replant. My preferred carbon-rich materials and sequence (bottom to top) are: biochar, compost, ramial, wood chips. 

Although I make my own compost, I never have enough. Ants, mice and voles haul seeds around, and seem to like dragging grass seeds and some dicots into my compost piles. If you can get it, compost from methane digesters is seed free. 

When I rework beds, I layer biochar and compost over the open garden bed that is ready to replant. Then I plant into this area, working the carbon materials down and around each hole and the roots. I may also add more compost on top, below the top layers (ramial and wood chips). 

Ramial is a freshly shredded blend of hardwood stems and leaves, like shrub and tree branches. During fall cleanup I shred hardwood branches before leaf fall, and put these chips out as a top dressing on garden beds. This mix breaks down easily without needing extra nitrogen, and helps boost carbon in the soil. It’s almost as good as foliar sprays for plant health. Like compost, I never have enough ramial. 

Biochar is charcoal, pretreated with compost to inoculate it with microorganisms, and is usually ground into a coarse powder. It helps soils retain water and nutrients, and promotes good soil structure. It’s especially a boost for beneficial soil fungi, which helps promote healthy roots in Pacifica iris.

Perennials thrive with wood chip mulches. We have trees, which regularly need limbs removed. I chip them, and turn the resulting wood chip pile to compost. Fungal mycelia appear throughout the wood piles within a few weeks. When I add these chips to an iris bed, fungi are coming with them. Fungi are beneficial for both the soil and my plants. 

If wood chips are too coarse when fresh, run them through a chipper.  (NOTE: I have learned the hard way to wear a mask when chipping—my lungs do not care to inhale wood dust, fine bits of leaves, shredded fungi, or compost fragments. For extra protection, put a bandana over the top of a N95 mask. Eye protection is a good idea too.)

Fine wood chips can also be added to a compost pile. They provide a coarse source of carbon and help break down food scraps for optimal compost texture.

Other soil amendments to add to garden soils during the fall include: eelgrass, dried kelp meal, ground oyster shells, feather meal, and mineral soil amendments. 

Eelgrass mats wash up on the boat ramp at the local port, which gardeners can collect. We have enough rain that we can add it to garden beds, on top of the wood chips, and know the rain will dilute the salt. Otherwise, lay the eelgrass out to compost, let rain wash the pile for a month or two, then spread it.

Winter is coming, but before that season comes fall--the best time to plant, replant and transplant on the West Coast. Enjoy the season!

First Flowers From "Dark Rose with Gold Signal" Seeds

by Kathleen Sayce

Rain was due on the night of May 1, so I went out before dark to take photos of first flowers that opened that day and the day before from one seed lot that was described in the Society for Pacific Coast Native Irises seed list a couple of years ago as having a pod parent with dark rose and gold signal flowers. 

The seeds were from Debby Cole's garden on Mercer Island near Seattle. These were the first flowers I have seen from this seed group. 

More than two decades ago, I had plans to select for new Pacifica iris with weather-resistant petals and clear, well-saturated colors that were adapted to my local climate. In the intervening years, I found that said climate is not conducive to hand pollination, or at times any pollination at all, of Pacifica irises. To put this simply, it's usually too wet and windy to hand pollinate Pacificas when modern hybrids are in flower. 

I tried small protective covers of twin-wall polycarbonate, weighted down with bricks to keep the wind from pulling them off and sailing them around the yard. Nope, still too windy; and often, the rain is horizontal, even in April and May. Flowers blow off stems, petals melt, or pollen simply does not germinate on the styles. 

These days, I get seeds from the SPCNI seed catalog and enjoy the fruits of other gardens instead. So here's what I have so far in 2022:

First up is a gold signal, rose veins and apricot base color combination that is quite lovely. The petals are not overly frilled and have a nice substance. I will be checking this and others in the wet weather to come to see how they hold up. 

The next flower is a lovely medium rose, dark rose veins on the falls, gold signal. It too has nice substance. What will the rain do to this one?

Darker rose, wider petals, and much darker rose veining to the petal tips, an interesting signal with a white outer area and a gold inner area. This iris is intriguing for the complexity of the falls, and its darker rose color. 

The last one is a good example of what goes astray between one's intentions in hybridizing and reality.  While I was trying to focus on the dark falls, I knocked this flower off the stem! Luckily, there is another flower on the same stem, and another stem still developing. While the coming storm won't help me see how it survives rain, the next few flowers may. 

It has smaller petals than the other three with nice substance to them, as irises with simpler petals seem to have.  There is also an interesting hint of paler color on the developing style arms--we'll have to wait for the next flowers to know for sure. 

So there you have it:  four out of eighteen pots, all with different flowers!

Update: Iris douglasiana at Atlanta Botanical Garden

by Kathleen Sayce

Iris douglasiana seedling at Atlanta Botanical Garden

In January 2022, Raleigh Wasser, Horticulture Manager, Atlanta Botanical Garden, sent me a update about their lone Iris douglasiana plant, which is growing in an alpine style bed with excellent drainage. After reading Wasser’s article about the botanical garden’s alpine-style bed in the Rock Garden Quarterly, I wrote a blog post about it in June 2021. 

World of Irises readers may recall that this plant flowered last spring. The plant went on to produce a pod with about ten seeds last summer. Botanic garden staff collected the seeds and sowed them. 

Raleigh’s update takes up the narrative: “We germinated a douglasiana seed! Just put it in some potting mix and left it in a corner of our greenhouse. Of about 10 seeds this is the only one that germinated.”

I suggested she put that pot outside as winter ends, and perhaps other seeds might germinate. Seeds of Pacific Coast native irises may take one to three years to decide to sprout, even from the same pod. However, getting even one seed to germinate and thrive is wonderful! 

Reminder: Seeds of Pacific Coast native irises do not like to germinate in warm, humid conditions. These seeds are fine outside in the snow and rain, so long as it is not too cold. Zone 7, -10°F is about their lower limit. I suspect the Atlantic Botanic Garden greenhouse where the seedling germinated is cool, not warm. 

This extraordinary Pacific Coast iris and its offspring continue to deliver surprises in its Atlanta, Georgia home.

(Still) Searching for Iris innominata

 by Kathleen Sayce

A conversation with a lapsed and now renewed member of Society for Pacific Coast Native Iris (SPCNI) reminded me of my long search for Iris innominata by seed and plant form for my own garden.

I. innominata x ? in my garden

In 2010, I joined the SPCNI field trip to southwest Oregon, where I was able to see tens of thousands of Pacifica irises flowering in the wild, including thousands of I. innominata. Flower colors varied from pale yellow to intense, dark golden yellow, almost orange, with veining from dark yellow to red. This spurred me to grow this lovely iris in my own garden.

I. innominata in Southwest Oregon, 2010

The search for I. innominata plants or seeds began innocuously. As a new member of SPCNI, I ordered seeds from the SPCNI annual seed exchange. I also ordered from SIGNA’s seed exchange. Plants were purchased from a variety of sources in the western United States. All were labeled I. innominata. 

Meanwhile I read about Iris x aureonympha ‘Golden Nymph’, an early garden cross between I. douglasiana and I. innominata by Edith Hardin English in her Seattle, Washington garden. She liked the golden flowers but disliked the short stems and the ease with which flowers melted in heavy rain, sentiments with which I completely agree! 

 The SIGNA Checklist of Hybrids described Iris x aureonympha ‘Golden Nymph’ as “Soft golden yellow flower with veining reduced to markings of deeper yellow, two flowers to each stem." The name was published as I. aureonympha ‘Golden Nymph’ in the National Horticulture Magazine, October 1948, and reprinted in the Bulletin of the American Iris Society, p. 40-42, #125, April 1952.” [page 146, SIGNA Checklists of Iris] The article was reprinted in the Almanac for SPCNI, Spring 1977 with a note by Jean Witt that English was the first person in the Unied States to hybridize I. innominata. Note that all PCI species easily hybridize with each other, so wild crosses between I. douglasiana and I. innominata are likely, as both live in Southwest Oregon. 

But I digress—back to the outcome of my search through seed exchanges and nurseries for I. innominata: 

Three times the plants I purchased turned out to be I. douglasiana or other Pacifica iris selections, none matching I. innominata for plant habit and leaf characters even when flowers were (rarely) yellow. I retained a lovely I. douglasiana x unknown PCI cross with a sturdy short grow habit, of unregistered name ‘Burnt Sugar.’

I. pseudacorus sold as I. innominata. Not!

Four times the seeds also were not I. innominata, and tended to undistinguished lavenders. The most spectacular fails were two: A plant from a rock garden nursery that was actually I. pseudacorus, identified when it flowered, and a seed lot that grew into Spuria irises of unknown flower color but unmistakable growth form. My garden is too cool and dry in summer for spurias to thrive, so out it went.

Iris 'Burnt Sugar', unregistered Pacifica iris with I. douglasiana genes

Debby Cole took pity on me after a few years and sent me a few seeds from one of her yellow-flowered innominata-like plants, which upon flowering from seed in my yard we concluded were most likely to be I. innominata x I. bracteata. These had short stems, yellow flowers and the narrow dark green leaves of I. innominata. The veins on the falls were reddish brown. 

Another I. innominata x ? grown from seed 

The plants lived for years in my garden, flowering well until a hedge grew up that shaded them a bit too much. If I can find them this fall, I intend to move the plants to the wild lawn at Willapa National Wildlife Refuge in a few weeks, in hopes that they will enjoy that locale. The trigger for this remembrance was that newly returned SPCNI member casually mentioning that he grows I. innominata in his own garden. All I can say is he’s lucky. I haven’t managed to get it, let alone grow it!

Willapa Refuge’s Wild Lawn: First Spring

Kathleen Sayce, June 18, 2021

A seedling PCI shows its complex parentage

It’s been eight months since the wild lawn was planted at the new office for Willapa National Wildlife Refuge, and Pacifica irises bloomed in their first spring. I took a few photos when I visited the lawn in April and June, while Program Manager Jackie Ferrier photographed almost every iris that flowered. 

We expect a bigger display of flowers next year as the wild lawn settles in. 

A variety of Pacifica iris grow in the lawn, including I. douglasiana, I. tenax, and seedlings from PCI hybrids. The plan is to let all the plants set seed, and scatter the seed around in late summer. We will also be planting more areas in coming years as the blackberries and other woody shrubs are suppressed around the visitors center and staff offices. One annual fall mowing is planned. Without mowing, woody shrubs and trees would soon (very soon!) take over the entire area. 

Looking NW in early spring to Willapa Bay

The grasses that provide a backdrop to the wildflowers are fescues, including Roemer’s and red fescue, and a low growing fescue mix. A combination of fescue plugs and seeds were used. This is important, because the grasses that grew here historically included reed canary grass, velvet grass and orchard grass, all too large and too dense for irises to thrive with them. 

Thrift in meadow

Iris tenax seedling

Other wildflowers include strawberry, springbank clover, yarrow, pearly everlasting and thrift. 

A new compost facility is selling compost by the truckload, so the next sections of the wild lawn will get a top dressing of compost to boost nutrient retention in winter, and water retention in summer. In these sections the compost will be tilled into the upper few inches. In the original section, we will top dress the lawn with an inch or so of compost next fall. 

I. douglasiana

PCI Mission Santa Cruz

This location was formerly a cattle ranch homesite, and there are thousands of daffodils growing throughout the area. The daffodils were retained as legacy plants, and also put on a nice display last spring. 

This fall we will add more wildflowers, including shooting-stars, common camas, checkermallow, chocolate lily, blue-eyed grass, and of course, more irises. 

If anyone wants a plant list, please contact me by email and I will send you the plant-list-in-progress. 

Wild Pacifica Irises in Northern California

By Kathleen Sayce, with Photos by Tom Lofken

Tom lives in northern California, and took the photos for this essay over several years. 

Iris douglasiana

First up is a tough, widely distributed iris, Iris douglasiana, which grows naturally from southern Oregon to southern California near Santa Barbara. Tom took this image at Point Reyes, where an extensive purple-flowered population can be found. 

Yellow, white, rose pink and lavender flowers are also common for this species, which produces some of the toughest plants the Pacifica Iris group for gardens. 

Iris hartwegii ssp. pinetorum

Next, from the Sierra Nevada foothills, Iris hartwegii ssp. pinetorum.  This subspecies may eventually be re-elevated to species status as its genetics are distinctly different from other subspecies. I. h. pinetorum grows in the California Coast Ranges and Sierra Nevada, where it prefers flats in open pine forests. 

[Readers may recall I grow Iris hartwegii ssp. australis in my garden; this subspecies grows only in the Transverse Ranges of southern California.]

Iris macrosiphon

Iris macrosiphon is widespread in northern California and also varies in flower color. It is found around the Bay Area in the mountains, and north in the Coast Range to the Klamath Range, northern California. I. macrosiphon has a very long ovary tube—the ‘stem’ between the ovary and the flower petals. The leafy bracts in the photo cover the long tube. The ovary sits just above the base of the bracts and well below the flower. 

Iris tenuissima ssp. tenuissima 

Iris tenuissima ssp. tenuissima is found in northern California, in the Sierra Nevada foothills and Coast Range. Flowers are pale yellow to white, with dark maroon to red veins. 

Iris bracteata

Iris bracteata grows in northern California and southern Oregon, has pale yellow flowers with dark veins, often with a reddish color to the perianth tubed, and is typically found in yellow pine forests above 1,000 ft elevation. This photo is from Josephine County, Oregon. 

Iris chrysophylla

Iris chrysophylla has strikingly long stigmatic crests, those petal bits that stick up on the style arms.  These look like two long teeth (a vampire’s long canines), in an otherwise typical wild Pacifica Iris flower. Flowers are usually pale yellow, can be white, and are veined burgundy on the falls. This species grows in open coniferous forests in northern California and southern Oregon. 

Iris thompsonii

Tom looked for the golden iris, Iris innominata in northern California, which grows wild only in southern Oregon. It has lovely yellow (dark gold to pale yellow) flowers. 

Instead, he found a hybrid of Iris thompsonii, possibly crossed with I. bracteata or I. tenuissima, showing pale petals, strong veining, and growing in densely floriferous clumps. 

Like I. innominata, I. thompsonii is deciduous, with leaves dying back to the ground each winter. 

Other species that share this trait are Iris tenax and I. hartwegii. 

Taxonomy:

For current taxonomy, refer to The Jepson Manual, 2nd edition, for a key to Irises species in this subsection. All taxa except Iris tenax ssp. tenax and ssp. gormanii are covered in this key.  

Older taxonomy references include Victor Cohen, A field guide to species, and Lee Lentz’s books. The latter three publications are available to download by members of the Society for Pacific Coast Native Iris on the SPCNI website in the members only area.