i harvested some wild irises growing in the wild near a local bog - they were about 2-3' tall - but who knows the potential for height -

the tubers are sometimes a solid woody tuber and a lot of roots

everythign is kinda soft - not solid wood hard - maliable, instead


the whole root mass takes up about 10" width, when i rip them from the soft mud on the edge of the stream;



can i determine, from the above descriptions, whether they are going to produce the blue or more invasive, undesirable [to me] yellowflag iris?



also, do you feel that i can leave them in a tray of water in the winter and that they would survive the winter in the water filled tray o'ice and tuber?

Normally, the yellow iris is much larger and bulkier but if you don't have other iris there for comparison, it's really hard for me to tell you how to tell them apart. My yellow iris have leaves that can be a few inches wide while the blue flag leaves are normally only 1-1.5" wide. That's not always the case but that's the best guess I can give you. There are other iris out there but those are the most likely. My blue flag usually don't grow higher than 1-1.5 feet while the yellow flag can easily grow a few feet high. In the wild, of course, blue flag can probably grow larger than in my 2 gallon pots. Did you actually measure them at 3' high? Since you don't have a pond to put the iris in, I suggest digging them into the ground for winter. They might be able to overwinter in a small container of ice but it might also be too much cold exposure for them.

i think that the leaves are only 1" wide; does a one year mature yellow flag have 2" wide leaves - or only years into growth

i accidentally left them in a bucket of now frozen water - i think its not to late to thaw them slowly and drop em in the ground.


i think they only go to about 26"


i do have a pond - a 11 x 6 x 30"


i have to clean off the frozen roots of soil before i drop them in

Young yellow flag iris have more narrow leaves. Since I cut mine to the water level every fall, the wide leaves I do get from that years growth but only from mature tubers.

You always talk about your pond that you're going to put in so I wasn't sure if you already had one.

Last year I left my iris in the VF. They froze over right at the water line. They were the first to return in the spring.

This year my average water level in the VF is a bit lower, so I tossed the iris into the main pond. I am hoping they will overwinter down tehre, and be manageable in the spring.

I have some major dividing to do they were grown into a huge mass.