Iris: Dutch, Bearded, and Which One Actually Ships

Iris is one of the few flowers where the version people picture and the version they can buy are different plants. Almost every image in someone's head is a bearded iris — ruffled, enormous, with a fuzzy caterpillar of a beard down each fall. Almost every iris in a shop is a Dutch iris, which is slim, sharp and unbearded. Knowing which is which saves a disappointing conversation.

Dutch iris — the one you can actually order

Iris × hollandica grows from a bulb, forces well, ships well and is available for most of the year with peak supply in spring. This is the florist's iris.

It is a narrow, upright, architectural flower: three upright standards, three downward falls, each fall marked with a bright yellow or white blaze. Blue Magic (deep violet-blue), Telstar, Discovery, Casa Blanca and White Wedgwood cover most of the range, which runs through blue, violet, white, yellow and a bronze-purple.

Vase life is the catch. The bud opens over a day or so, the open flower holds for two to three days, and then it is done. A stem typically carries one or two buds, so realistic life for a Dutch iris arrangement is four to five days. That is short, and it should be priced and planned as short.

Buy it in pencil stage. The correct stage is when the bud is still furled into a tight point but is showing a clear inch of colour at the tip — the trade calls it pencil or quill. Fully green buds may never open; open flowers are already halfway through.

Bearded iris — the garden one

Iris germanica grows from a rhizome, flowers in this region in May, and is the ruffled, heavily perfumed, absurdly beautiful thing in the pictures. It does not ship, it is not sold commercially cut in any volume, and the reason is that the individual flower lasts one to two days.

What redeems it is the stem: a bearded iris stem carries five to nine buds that open in sequence, so a single stem in a vase can perform for a week or more even though no individual flower does. This is a flower to cut from a garden, or to buy from a specialist grower in early May, and to enjoy on its own terms. If someone offers you bearded iris in November, they are wrong about something.

The others, briefly

• Siberian iris — smaller, beardless, elegant, grassy foliage. Late spring, garden only. The seed pods afterwards are excellent dried material.
• Japanese iris (I. ensata) — flat, wide, almost plate-like, June. Spectacular and very local.
• Iris reticulata — tiny, six inches tall, February, and one of the first things to flower in a DC garden. A pot of these on a February table is worth more than most cut flowers available that month.

Handling

Iris stems are soft and hollow-ish and foul water quickly, so strip low foliage and change the water every other day. Recut on arrival at a sharp angle. Cool room, out of direct sun — heat rushes the opening and shortens an already short flower.

The falls bruise. A Dutch iris handled roughly shows brown creases along the falls within a day, and there is no fixing it. This is a flower to arrange once and then leave alone.

One useful habit: pinch off each flower as it collapses. A spent iris goes translucent and papery and looks considerably worse than an empty stem, and removing it lets the second bud on the stem take over cleanly.

Designing with it

Iris is vertical, narrow and hard-edged, which makes it the natural counterpoint to anything round. A vessel of iris and nothing else is a modernist statement and reads as deliberate. Iris mixed into a soft garden arrangement usually fights the arrangement and loses.

The strongest uses are the simplest: a tall clear cylinder with nine stems of Blue Magic and their own foliage; or three stems in a narrow neck on a desk, which is one of the few genuinely elegant things you can do with a twenty-dollar budget. The blue is also uncommonly true — real, non-dyed blue is rare in flowers, and iris, delphinium, muscari and hydrangea are most of the list.

For that blue register in something built to last longer, our Capitol Hill Blue Grace and Dusty Blue and Sage Arrangement both work the same palette with more durable material. If you specifically want iris, the Designer Flower Mix can be specified around it in season — just plan on refreshing sooner than usual.

What it means, if that matters to you

Iris is named for the Greek messenger of the gods who travelled the rainbow between worlds, and it has carried associations of message-bearing, faith and wisdom ever since. It is the fleur-de-lis of French heraldry — stylised, but an iris. It is also, unusually for a flower with that much symbolic weight, entirely unfreighted in modern American usage, which makes it a safe and slightly unexpected choice for a professional or congratulatory gesture where roses would say too much.