Iris hunting


Today was my first excursion iris hunting.  I discovered a place nearby 
called Richardson Forest Nature Preserve.  It was donated to the Hamilton 
County Parks system about 25 years ago and has remained undeveloped.  That 
means no trails, no roads, no buildings, no parking lots, no toilets, no 
nothing.  Well, nothing but 245 acres of marshlands, filled with rare plant 
species.  That's how it's described on the HCPS website anyway.  To me that 
sounded like a great place to start looking for local wild irises.  Also, 
it is within a stone's throw of the Great Miami River, a pretty major 
waterway which connects to the Ohio River just a dozen or so miles downstream.

I took a backpack along with bottled water, a camera, and a tape 
recorder.  I took my cellphone too, but probably not too surprisingly that 
didn't work in the "wildnerness".  For several hours I hiked along the 
streams and across fields and took lots of wonderful photos.  I found 
frogs, turtles, snails, spiders, but to my amazement hardly any wild 
flowers.  Everything was green, but very few things were flowering.  The 
cicadas were EVERYWHERE.  I tried looking for the infamous blue-eyed ones, 
but gave up as there were just too many of them.

Call it beginners luck, but I did find some wild irises growing alongside 
one of the streams.  Unfortunately they were not in bloom.  I had 
apparently just missed it as seed pods were only just beginning to form, so 
I couldn't use that as a clue to know if it was a Hexagonae or Laevigatae 
specimen.  After further observation I concluded that it was probably Iris 
pseudacorus... a non-native.  One of the spent blooms appeared 
yellowish.  Additionally there was a pronounced mid-rib the length of each 
leaf.  I've never noticed that characteristic before in versicolor, 
brevicaulis, or any of the other natives.  And then there was the overall 
size.  The clump was over 2ft. diameter, and the leaves and bloom stalks 
easily ranged from 4 to 5ft. tall.  None of the natives are supposed to get 
that tall here in Ohio.  At most I'd expect them to reach 2.5 or maybe 3 
ft.  The rhizomes were small, thin, reddish, and hairy.  To me, this 
resembled Iris fulva, but who knows!  Unfortunately there's not enough 
information in the Iris Species Database yet for me to make any 
determination.  I guess I'll have to consult my books instead.  How 
low-tech!  :-)

I recorded their location in a notebook once I got back to my car, and I 
will be back next year to get some pictures of the clump in 
bloom.  Tomorrow, I'm going back to Richardson and will head upstream (away 
from the Great Miami) instead of downstream like I went today.

Dennis in Cincinnati



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