Yellow flag
Iris pseudacorus
Family · Iridaceae · Poisonous
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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.
Emergency
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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.
Streams and ditches · Fields and pasture
Also known asyellow iris, water flag
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
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.
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.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
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