Spanish iris
Iris xiphium
Family · Iridaceae · Harmless
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The blue-purple that turns up alone in May meadows and clearings, elegant enough to look planted. It is native to the Peninsula and the ancestor of the florist's iris.
Fields and pasture · Scrubland · Uplands · Roadsides and waste ground
Also known asSpanish iris
How to tell it
Very narrow, almost cylindrical grooved leaves. One or two flowers per stem, purple or blue, with a yellow or white blotch on each drooping petal. It grows from a bulb.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
None to encourage
It is a plant to look at and photograph; the bulb is not dug up, and collecting for gardens has already thinned entire populations in the south.
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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