Hi Kenneth and James,
I went down to the stream and since versicolor is also in bloom I was
able to identify the plants and compare their foliage. Sure enough,
the pseudacorus has a nice sharp ridge down the center that is easily
seen and felt while the versicolor we have is totally smooth. Even a
lay person like myself couldn't mistake them - now that, thanks to
the species-iris group, I know what to look for.
The watershed director is very happy that we won't have to pull
everything up. Besides the painful thought of losing hundreds of blue
iris we would have had a freshly denuded landscape, a landscape just
recovering from all the construction work last year.
Thanks so much for your help!
-Helen
--- In iris-species@yahoogroups.com, Kenneth Walker <kenww@...> wrote:
>
> Helen,
>
> Looking at several varieties of each species in my garden,
pseudacorus
> does have a prominent ridge in the center of the leaf composed of a
> single vein. Versicolor has a less prominent ridge composed of 3
veins.
> I'd suggest someone compare leaves from a sample of plants in the
> wetland to see if they can be divided into two categories. Each
> volunteer could be armed with a sample leaf from each species when
> identifying the pseudacorus for eradication.
>
> Ken Walker
>
> James Harrison PhD wrote:
> >
> > Pseudacorus has a sharp vein in the middle of each leaf. Some
other
> > iris have a less prominent vein, like JI, but I think this is
the
> > easy way to pick out Pseudacorus.
> >
>
