by Ron Killingsworth
Louisiana has plenty of “bayous”. Dictionary.com defines bayou as “located
chiefly in lower Mississippi Valley and Gulf States, a marshy arm, inlet, or
outlet of a lake, river, etc., usually sluggish or stagnant.” It is pronounced
bahy-oo.
A list of Louisiana bayous and rivers can be found at
Wikipedia, even an alphabetical list of bayous.
There are, not surprisingly, 56 Louisiana irises registered
with the name “bayou” as either the first name or the last name of the
iris.
Not surprising since there are so
many bayous in Louisiana.
I do not grow
all the Louisiana irises named “bayou”, nor do I have pictures of all of
them.
In fact, quite a few are missing
their pictures in the
Society for Louisiana Irises checklist.
The checklist is published by SLI on a yearly
basis and contains 2553 registered Louisiana irises and many pictures.
However, I do grow quite a few and decided to
show the diversity of Louisiana irises by concentrating only on irises with the
name “bayou”.
Although they share having
“bayou” as part of their names, they are very different from each other in
size, season, form and color.
Let us start with irises in which the second name is
“bayou.”
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| 'Arabian Bayou' (Faggard, A 1984) - cream peach |
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| 'Cedar Bayou' (Strawn, K 1993) - blue |
There are others with a last name of "bayou" but I do not have pictures of those irises. Now for those sharing the first name "bayou".
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| 'Bayou Bandit' (Weeks, Jeff 1998) - pink with lavender tones - photo by MJ Urist |
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| 'Bayou Blue' (Arny, Charles 1962 - blue with white spray pattern |
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| 'Bayou Candelabra' (Arny, Charles 1974) - blue self |
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| 'Bayou Classic' (Faggard, A 1986) - blue purple |
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| 'Bayou Comus' (Arny, Charles 1969) - light tan self |
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| 'Bayou Duplantier' (O'Connor, Pat 2002) - violet |
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| 'Bayou Fountain' (O'Connor, Pat 1992) - blue purple |
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| 'Bayou Heartthrob' (Faggard, A 1980) -violet - photo by Pat O'Connor |
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| 'Bayou Mystique' (Dunn, Mary 1988) - lavender violet |
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| 'Bayou Mystique' |
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| 'Bayou Shadow' (Arny, Charles 1978) - lavender-pink |
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| 'Bayou Short Stuff' (Faggard, A 1986) - blue - photo by Iris City Gardens |
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| 'Bayou Sunset' (MacMillan, W 1945 - soft rose |
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| 'Bayou Tiger' (Strawn, K 1993) - a great LSU iris |
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| 'Bayou Vermilion' (MacMillan, W 1943) - velvety crimson |
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| 'Bayou Vixen' (Rowlan, H 1985) - brick red |
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As you can see, Louisiana irises exhibit many different flower forms. The flowers as well as the plants come in many sizes. Plants can be from 12 inches to over 6 feet. The flower can be very small or as large as a plate. I have added a picture below that shows a huge flower of a Louisiana iris but I do not have the name recorded.
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| Unknown very large Louisiana iris bloom |
