Perhaps a story riddled with confusion? Here in Australia it is common to hear people refer to bearded iris as flags. I have even seen this name used in garden magazines, and books. I have also seen Iris pseudacorus refered to as 'flag iris'. Nearly 400 years is plenty of time for people to get their flags mixed up.

To answer your question, yes, Iris versicolor, often called blue flag iris, is native to North America. As Sparaxis points out, common names are somewhat misleading as many iris are referred to as "flags" and the true "blue flag iris" is Iris virginica. Iris versicolor, as its name imples, can often flower in a range of colors but blues seems to be the most common.

Thanks, Sparaxis and Gardengal! Our original document - a letter written by Mistress Gardiner in 1635 refers to "blue flags". This name has followed this iris since then. Our assumption that it refers to Iris versicolor could be wrong. Would iris virginica grow in the Netherlands and in CT zone 5 and 6? Would iris versicolor bloom in yellow/brown or are you refering to shades of blue? To our consternation the iris given to us is yellow/brown and we wonder if it is really related to Mistress Gardiner's blue flags. Nearly 400 years is plenty of time for people to get their rhyzomes mixed up too. Gnomlet

Iris versicolor can range from white to pink to various shades of blue and purple, but is not yellow/brown. You've got something besides Iris versicolor -- are the flowers solid yellow with slight brown markings on the falls (Iris pseudacorus)?

I. versicolor (and I believe I. shrevei) is native here in WI, so yes it could definitely grow in zones 5/6 in CT. There is genetic diversity of course, but always have I seen the various species in shades of blue/purple, so it is unlikely that yours is any of the species associated with the common name blue flag. I virgica is also hardy in zones 5/6. I grow I. virginica 'Contraband Girl' with no problems. As far as there being a "true" blue flag iris, there is no such thing due to the nature of common names. (hence using scientific names) I. versicolor, I. prismatica, I. setosa, I. shrevei, and I. virginica are all called blue flag iris throughout their native ranges. The common name is correct for each one. Also the nomenclature of I. shrevei and I. virginica seems confused, as I've seen them listed as seperate species as well as shrevei being a subsp. of virginica. I have not yet gotten to the bottom of which is scientifically correct. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there are blue european sp. that are called blue flag as a common name.

Nick

Alicia. Our 1635 iris is definitely not I.pseudoacorus. I'm very familiar with that one. This 1635 supposed descendant is a dirty yellow with the falls much streaked in brown. It is not at all attractive, spreads vigorously and I wouldn't give it garden space if it were not a gift with a history.
Woodland garden. Do you KNOW if there are european "blue flags" that are not bearded iris? We would surely love to trace out the various possibilities of the possible antecedents and descendants of "iris 1635". I am not above recommending to our garden chairperson that we grow some of the several iris you mention just for the purpose of illustrating the story of the hunt for I. 1635.
All of you who have answered Thank you. Gnomlet

There are two Europeon species you might look at - i. siberica and i. foetidissima.

Siberica is definitely a 'blue flag' in it's wild form and could very well have picked up that moniker anywhere along it's way. It has been in cultivation for many centuries and would,likely have been well known to the Dutch of that time. However it was not until the 20th century that anything approaching yellow was hybridized with this species.

Foetidissima definitely has yellow flowered forms and they are usually muddy and unattractive. It also has glossy emerald green foliage, likes shade, and has very colorful seedpods in the fall (the feature it is usually grown for). I have never heard the term flag applied to it though, but as this is a generic term for iris it would not be unlikely.

Good luck in your quest!

Mike

Have you actually seen this iris in bloom? Do you have a photo of it that you could post in the gallery for people to help with identification?
It may help if you look through the various species irises on the species gallery page:

Here is a link that might be useful: SIGNA species photos

It is my impression that Iris siberica is not a species but a hybrid. Currier McEwen was the expert and his books will answer that right up front. As for blue flag, I would look for an answer with the Iris Society or perhaps in the old book, The Genus Iris, by William R. Dykes.

Common names are a thing of danger. Often, a name used in England was applied to a similar plant in the US. And, not to sound like a spoilsport, unless they have clear documentation back to the original family, there is no way of proving provenance, with plants or any other "antique".

While it is true most common garden forms of Siberian iris are hybrids, there most definitely is a species Iris siberica. "Siberian iris" is a loose term applying to a group of related iris species originating primarily in Asia with some spreading into eastern Europe as well. Siberian iris are divided into two categories: Subseries Siberica consisting of three species with 28 chromosomes - Iris siberica, sanguinea and typhifolia. Most Siberians in commerce are hybrids of this subseries. Subseries Chrysographes consists of some 8-10 species, all with 40 chromosomes and including Iris chrysographes, bulleyana, delavayi, forestii, wilsonii and others. These are commonly referred to as Sino-Siberians and while they tend not to cross freely with the true siberians, hybrids between the two subseries have been made and increase the color range of Siberians. SinoSiberians tend to be less hardy and drought tolerant than Siberians.

And then you have CalSibes which are hybrids between the SinoSiberians and Pacific coast native irises, which share the same chromosome count. These have extremely specific growing requirements and tend to be less tolerant of unfavorable conditions so their range of adaptability tends to be focused along the Pacific coast.

In my early childhood in the Intermountain West of the 1940's all I ever heard referring to irises of any kind was the term "flag."

This must have come out of Pennsylvania and thereabouts, as during migrations westward and through marriages all the rest of my ancestors were from Scandinavia. They learned English from their neighbors, and in that context learned these flowers were "flags."

It was only as we gained some sophistication about the genus and began growing varieties for which we knew the varietal names that "flag" got dropped and became increasingly unpleasant to the ear when heard coming from others.

It appears that "flag" is about as generic as one can get as a common name for almost any kind of iris, with the probable exception of oncocyclus. Those who use the term are extremely unlikely to have ever encountered anything from that section.

I doubt my comment has added anything to the matter--it was just that the entries above stirred some vivid childhood memories and I could not resist adding to the thread.

Neil Mogensen

Nope, our Yellow "supposed 1635" is neither I. siberica nor I. foetidissima. I do not have any pictures. With all the help and questions all you good folks have given me I will REALLY examine our "supposed 1635", next spring and take notes and pictures. Meanwhile I'll go back to our documents to get a bit more of the progression of our rhyzome through time. The person who gave them to us is, I understand,in poor health and elderly (also a well-known author on old garden plants) but may still be interested in offering insights on "blue flag 1635".
There is nothing wrong with childhood memories - they're great and make an old timer like me feel young again.
Gnomlet

Gnomlet, I collect old American garden books. Any chance of your sharing the name of the author who gave you the iris and who has written about old garden plants? If it is not invading his/her privacy.

Currier McEwan states in his book that I. sibirica is the species that has given it's name to the group. The first colour plate in his book is of I sibirica.
The modern "Siberian irises" in the 28 chromasome group have come mainly from I. sibirica, and are more selected cultivars rather than hybrids, a hybrid being a cross between species. Most of the modern development has come about from selecting for new colours, better forms, etc and by inducing tetraploidy, rather than by interspecies breeding.
The term "Hybridising" as it is used in the breeder sense, is generally taken to mean pollen daubing, and seedling growing, but scientifically a hybrid is an inter species cross, or occasionally an intergeneric cross.

What does this plant have for roots or rhizomes or bulbs? Holland has been a hot bed of flower growing for a long, long time.
Flag is often a term used for any old iris that is near wild form.

Come spring I would definately love to see a picture of this iris.

Iris versicolor grows wild in just about any fairly damp place. I literally have thousands of them out in the boggy places on the farm.

I love old plants with stories like this.

To start with, are you sure this is a beardless iris? My first inclination is strongly that it isn't. That it is supposed to be something like I. germanica, and the rhizomes got mixed up and it's something like Honorabile.

Here is a link that might be useful:

Growing up in CT we had purple wild iris in the fresh water swamps that we called "apostle plant", just to confuse the issue even more. Suspect it was I. versicolor, which also grows happily up here on the line between z5 and z6. Though possibly I. prismatica - it was some time ago...remember it had very "wild" looking flowers, not at all pouffy like the ones in our garden.

Gnomlet, I'm not anything resembling an expert! but your yellow/brown iris sounds a little like a popular german/hybrid from the 1940's, which a lot of people in CT had in their gardens. Yellow uprights, brown falls.

This is a really interesting thread.

gullible

forgot to include this link...

Here is a link that might be useful: species iris photo database

Again much thanks to all of you.
Ginny 12. My "old book" is not really old - copyright 1978. It is "Landscapes and Gardens for Historic Buildings" by Rudy j. Favretti and Joy Putman Favretti. Rudy Favretti is the person who gave us the rhyzomes. The book is valuable to my group because we are trying to establish a garden to go along with our historic house which is open to the public. Plants with stories are a wonderful addition.
Suenh. our "supposed 1635" has rhyzomes, not roots or bulbs.
Mad Gallica. My memory is that our "Sup. 1635" is beardless for I checked that but will look again in spring. I am not an iris expert and perhaps beards can be very small and I might not recognize them. Your Honorabile is lovely. I would not shun it in my personal garden, but would in our historical garden for it is surely post 1840. Our "Sup. 1635" is a very muddy yellow - ugly.
Gulible volunteer. Many of the iris versicolor in the database could be the "blue flag 1635" in our document.

Gnomlet, if your mystery iris has obvious rhizomes it is most likely a bearded of some germanica heritage. Beardless iris, like versicolor and virginica, have more of a fleshy root system similar to that of daylilies.

Just to throw in my 2-cents again: if your flag is beardless and not a bright yellow, is it possible that it is an Iris fulva variety? Color-wise they naturally run from a coppery-red to a bright yellow. They're native and were known during the colonial period, and they survive in the northeast.

Rudy Favretti is quite famous in the world of old gardens. His books are in many libraries. I have heard him speak and I think he taught at UConn for many years. He has advised on many reconstructions of historic gardens. I wonder if the wrong iris was accidentally passed along.

So much good and interesting information from all of you. Thank you.
Rudy Favretti gave our historical society advise on their gardens years ago and kept up a corespondence with the late Don Swan who was president of our historical society as well as president of the CT Botanical Soc. This was before my time with the group. We will be writing to him again once we have some good ideas to pass along for his comments. With all I have learned from numerous sources and all of your comments I tend to agree that the rhyzomes given us are not the blue flag 1636. Those probably got mixed up with others years ago. Yes the roots of our iris are definitely rhyzomes just like the ones we have on our I. germanica. (We grow pumila and Florentina as well as a few other seductions that we ought to get rid of as not being in our time period-pre 1840).
I am really back to two mysteries: what was that "blue flag" mentioned by Mistress Gardiner in 1635 and what is the iris given to us by Dr. Favretti. The good Dr. may have the answers yet. Meanwhile I shall keep searching and all ideas by all of you continue to be appreciated and inspire my enthusiasm.

Gnomlet - call me Marianne

Somewhere, I think it was 'The World of Iris' which should be easily obtained from or through the local library, I've read a fairly extensive discussion of early European species bearded iris. I think most of them are native to the area around the Adriatic and Anatolia, and the Italians had them in gardens very early. There are definitely yellow/brown ones, and I think that's either what you have, or a close descendent of one. I still think the 'blue flag' is a germanica selection.

What I'd do, is try to get somebody into Dr. Favretti's garden during bloom time this spring. It wouldn't surprise me at all if he has or has had a species/ancient bearded bed and that's where the confusion set in. People are likely to be highly skeptical of a yellow 'blue flag' so it's unlikely to be an old mistake. Some color definitions have changed with time, but not those in this plant type.

Have you looked at Flavescens? It is one of the ancients and is yellow and cream with brown markings.

Mike

Flavascens would be a thought.
I have a pic of it in this album. Near the bottom of the page labeled as noid9

Here is a link that might be useful: iris album

You may well solve your mystery with Ann Leighton's books, especially the first one, Early American Gardens: For Meate or Medicine. She has a glossary of plants grown in the 13 colonies in the 1600s-early 1700s. That book was published in the 1970s but may still be in print. Certainly, it is widely available in libraries.

The two sequels cover the later 1700s and the 1800s. People have relied on these books for years and Rudy Favretti will be very familiar with them and their late author (whose real name was Isadore Smith, from Ipswich MA.)

According to her, flag was used as a common name for irises in Europe, before colonization. But as Mad Gallica said, blue is blue and yellow is yellow.

I've looked at all those recommended here as well as others. Since I'm going on memory for the yellow/brown irises I'm suspending my search until spring when I shall look and note carefully. Ann Leighton is one of my favorites and I think of her books as mighty good literature besides being good historical garden research.
Today I met with our gardens chairperson to collect all the "blue flag" information she had. The best piece of information we found was a copy of page 102 of Rudy Favoretti's book "Landscapes and Gardens for Historic Buildings". It is a letter signed by Starr Gardiner Cooper and was written to Dr. Favretti sometime after spring 1952. She says:
" In one of the first letters that Mary Willemsen Gardiner, wife of Lion Gardiner, wrote home to Holland, she said " The blue flags that we brought with us are doing nicely in our kitchen garden". The kitchen garden, with a large bed of blue flags, was perpetuated by the proprietors of Gardiner's Island until Clarence Mac Kay took over a lease on the Manor House as well as on the shooting preserve. He tore out the kitchen garden to make an automobile entrance to the Manor House for his bride, Anna Case, the Metropolitan opera singer.
In 1912 my father (G. Duane Cooper), my uncle A. Gardiner Cooper and I visited Gardiner's Island. Lion Gardiner welcomed us cordially. When we were leaving, he asked if I would like a piece of the island for myself, but I replied that I already had some stones from the island in my pocket. He said that he had in mind something living since the island's earliest days, and he himself dug a clump of blue flags and told me their history.
I divided the clump between our yard at Shelton Island Heights and the Cooper-Gardiner plot in the Sag Harbor Cemetery, where they blossomed again last spring, 1952.
My clump at Shelton Island has flourished and multiplied so that I have given clumps from it to Sylvestor Manor on Shelton Island, to Miss Sahra Gardiner in East Hampton, and the President's House at Yale.
In 1949 I relocated my clump at Shelton Island Heights, where it has not done well, so I will relocate it again next week.
(Signed) Starr Gardiner Cooper
The iris , when received, was planted and allowed to flower. It is quite unlike any modern variety and quite resmbles ancient drawings and paintings of blue flag."

I expect to poke around to see if I can find any information on the clues in this letter.
What do you think?
Gnomlet aka Marianne

Even reading this extract - it is not clear that the 2 "Blue Flags" referred to are one and the same. Given the common usage of the name, the ones brought from Holland, and later dug up to make way for a driveway may well be no relation to the ones given to Cooper. There is nothing in the extract that would definitely dispute this opinion except for a verbal history from someone who pulled out the original clumps or irises, and therefore may well have mixed them up or lost them.
Clearly your yellow/brown iris is not the same iris as either of the ones mentioned in the above history. Very confusing. Nevertheless it will be interesting to at least identify the iris in question when it blooms :-)

That letter sounds pretty good to me as far better provenance than comes with most old plants. If you can find blue flag growing in any of the locations mentioned in the letter, and if they look like the historic species called blue flag, you should be in business. An iris expert, with your own reading of Gerard and other old herbals, should produce illustrations of blue flag.

I am not an iris expert (can you tell?:)), but the American Iris Society must have a bulletin with articles on blue flag and could perhaps recommend a nearby expert.

When your iris blooms this spring, you may want to compare it to Holden Clough, a form of pseudocarus. Below is a link to a picture at Impressive Irises.

Here is a link that may be useful: {{gwi:1011655}}

Here is another pseudocarus selection, Phil Edinger. This picture is from Iris City Gardens.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:1011657}}

Iris Variegata? Just a wild guess, it is yellow/brown and I have seen it growing sort of wild.

reading this line of conversation tells me you all know a lot more about iris than I do but I remember growing up in the 50's my mom had regular bearded iris as well as some about 6-8 inches high that she called flags. They looked identical to the tall ones just shorter. That is the only name I knew them by and sure would love to find some again.

Vic01,
I think the iris you are thinking of are called 'dwarf bearded iris'. They come in blues, white, yellow and several colors on each bloom. They bloom earlier than their taller sisters/brothers. All the above corespondence shows the word 'flags' is, and has been, used for just about every kind of iris. I'm still searching for further information on our 1635 'flags'.
Gnomlet (Marianne)

Should be getting close to bloom time there isn't it?
I know after all this time I'd love to see a picture.
When this thread rose back up I popped right in to see if a pic had appeared.

It's still too early for blooms here. I would expect to see them end of the month or even early June. I've got a friend who is smart enough to take and send pictures. Obviously the ugly yellow irises which aren't the 1635 blue ones will be the only ones we can photograph.
I've written to Holland's Archives to see if they have any documentation of Mary Gardiner's original letter. Perhaps the whole story is just a family tale. Still - fun.

You can find pictures of various North American species iris at SIGNA (Species Iris Group of North America).

Here is a link that might be useful: SIGNA

Has your iris bloomed yet? :)

Yes. The yellow iris - which was supposed to be blue and descended from the blue flags of Mary Gardiner - is blooming right now. It is bearded. The bud starts out blue tipped then opens to yellow standards and blue striped yellow falls. Within a day or two the blue stripes turned brown and the yellow standards were not really clear yellow any more. We have had heat and rain so that may account for the dulling of the colors. The plant is robust and spreads rapidly. The flowers are 30"to 36" tall and smaller than those of today's.
Meanwhile we have been in touch with Dr. Favretti and he says that we obviously have the wrong iris as his ARE blue. He has recently divided his, discarding the extras but has offered us another try after his present clump spreads enough for another divide.I expect to get in touch with him again to see if he knows the botanical name of the Gardiner Island iris and if he could send us a picture. We also tried to make contact with "the President's House" at Yale but got no response, and we have e-mailed the museum at Worden in Holland asking for information about corespondence of Mary Gardiner. Also no answer to date.
So the hunt goes on. At least we now know that the yellow iris we have been cherishing as blue flag Gardiner Island is the wrong one and we may discard it.
Gnomlet aka Marianne