versicolor revisited

From: "Dan & Marilyn Mason" <dmason@rainyriver.lakeheadu.ca>

I visited patches of wild I. Versicolor this month. The first
locations were the wet banks of a couple bog lakes. These
irises were growing with their roots and bases of fans in water.
Some of the seed pods were just beginning to split open;
most were still green. This was Labor Day weekend.

The seed stalks held from one to six pods, the average being
approximately 2.5 pods per stalk. Approximately 30% of the pods
had borer holes visible. I found a borer in a pod I opened. It was
cream colored with a tan head, about 3/8" long. It had gone
through one of the three parts of the pod eating the seeds. The
rest of the seeds looked good. The seeds looked soft and edible
at this point, almost like sweet corn.

I picked some seed stalks with pods to save for seed. I started
drying them by putting the stalks into a pail in the greenhouse,
but as the pods dried out and split open and dropped some seeds
over the edged of the pail it became apparent that mice were
eating every seed that fell outside the pail, so I transfered the
pods to a paper grocery bag and hung them from a clothesline in
the house to finish drying them.

I tried tasting the seeds after they had dried for several days in
the house. At this point the seeds had hard, leathery outer shells
which tasted like cardboard, and the inner seeds were about the
same size and shape as tomato seed, but thicker and harder.
The inner seeds were hard enough that I was worried about
breaking a chunk from a tooth as I bit down on one. The seed
didn't break. I could see how these seeds would probably
survive being eaten by an animal or bird and could then be
dispersed with their droppings.

These bog lakeshore irises seemed to prefer the southern banks of
the two small lakes where they receive some shade from black
spruce in the spring, fall, winter. They had competition from tall
wild grasses, and were spread out in small clumps. There were no
clean stands of only irises.

The second sites I visited a couple weeks after Labor Day. These
were in the middle of fields which had been used for a pasture
recently, and a hayfield many years ago. Both patches were growing
in low spots where water puddled. There were 4 inches of water
when I visited them, from 7" rain in the last month. The pods were
almost all dried and split open and most of the seed fallen at
these locations. I noticed no signs of mold in these pods despite
3 weeks of wet cloudy weather.

The smallest of these field puddle stands was almost a clean stand
of Irises in the deepest part of the puddle. Four foot tall wild
grasses surrounded the puddles of irises. The puddle irises had
noticeably smaller pods than the bog lakeshore irises, but had
more pods per stalk than the bog irises. (I noticed fewer stalks
with single pods in the puddle irises than the bog irises.) Any
borers in the puddle irises had abandoned the pods by this point.
It was difficult to see or count borer holes on the blackish,
dried pods of the field puddle iris.

I picked some pods to save seeds from the puddle irises. I hung
these in a paper bag in the house out of reach of mice to dry. The
second day the pods were in the bags I took the bag outside for an
hour and left the bag open so quite a few ladybugs and a few small
spiders could escape. I'll send seed from the puddle irises to the
SIGNA seed exchange. The seeds from the bog lake I'm worried
they got too hot for a couple hours one night from the wood stove
almost below them. These I sowed in a nearby area which puddles
in the spring, and has the same wild grasses that surround the two
puddle sites where I. Versicolor already grows. I saved a few of
these bog lake seeds to plant in my garden this fall to see if
heat had harmed these seeds.

Dan Mason   zone 3, NW Ontario
dmason@rainyriver.lakeheadu.ca

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