Yellow flag

Iris pseudacorus

Family · Iridaceae · Poisonous

Toxic

Read this before the sheet

This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.

The big yellow of riverbanks and ditches, in May. It is the showiest freshwater flower in Portugal and toxic from end to end, which almost nobody knows.

Where it grows

Streams and ditches · Fields and pasture

Also known as

yellow iris, water flag

In flower

How to tell it

Sword leaves rising in a fan from the base, blue-green. Large yellow flowers with three drooping petals marked in brown. Always with its feet in water.

What it is confused with

Bulrush

Typha latifolia

Confusion that poisons

Out of flower the sword leaves are very similar and grow together. Bulrush has the brown cigar; yellow flag fans its leaves tightly from the ground, and is toxic.

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What it is for

None. The rhizome causes vomiting and the sap irritates skin. It is used today in reed beds for wastewater treatment, precisely because it absorbs what nobody wants in the river.

Sources

Flora-On