WILD FLOWERS OF NEW YORK 63 



Iris Family 



Iridaceae 

 Larger Blue Flag 



Iris versicolor Linnaeus 



Plate 26 



Stems round and smooth, erect, sometimes flexuous, 2 to 3 feet tall, 

 often branched above, leafy; leaves erect, shorter than and chiefly upon 

 the lower part of the stem, somewhat glaucous, one-half to i\ inches 

 wide; rootstock horizontal, thick, fleshy, covered with the fibrous roots. 

 Flowers several, the perianth consisting of six, clawed segments united 

 below into a tube, the three outer ones dilated, reflexed, violet-blue, varie- 

 gated with yellow, green and white; crestless, spatulate, 2 to 3 inches long, 

 and wider and longer than the three inner segments; the ovary below the 

 perianth tube, in fruit becoming an oblong, obscurely three-lobed capsule, 

 I to i^ inches long; divisions of the style petallike, arching over the 

 stamens, bearing the stigmas immediately under their two-lobed tips. 



In marshes, thickets and wet meadows, common along streams and 

 ponds, Newfoundland to Manitoba, south to Florida and Arkansas. 



Narrow Blue Flag; Poison Flagroot 



Iris prisDiatica Pvirsh 



Plate 27 



More slender in every way than Iris versicolor Linnaeus, 

 with a tuberous-thickened rootstock; stem i to 3 feet tall, bearing two 

 or three very narrow, almost grasslike leaves usually less than one-fourth 

 of an inch wide; flowers one or two at summit of each stem, blue, veined 

 with yellow on slender pedicels; outer perianth segments one-half to 2 

 inches long, smooth and devoid of a crest, the inner segments smaller 

 and narrower; the perianth tube about one-fourth of an inch long above 

 the ovary. Fruit a narrowly oblong capsule, acute at each end and sharpl3' 

 three-angled, i to ih inches long. 



