Wild Iris Seed Pods

This was the mystery plant that came up under trees in my city garden. As I had no idea what it was I watched it with great curiosity. It was very slow to grow. After about five years it was a fan shape of nine strappy leaves. And that's how it stayed, each year dropping the outside pair of leaves and producing new ones in the centre.

Twenty-odd years later, when I moved to the country, my curiosity and anticipation had not dimmed. I brought it with me and planted it close to the fir hedge. Within a year it had developed into a clump and the year after that flowered. It had tiny greyish yellow iris flowers.

Then I realised that it was the same as the clumps of irises that grow commonly under big trees here. It seems that what it was waiting for all those years was a few hundred metres of elevation.


Missed blip today: a biplane, flying low overhead, when it was the chainsaw and not the camera in my hands.