A few of these species are the wild ancestors of the widely grown hybrid bearded irises. They comprise Subgenus Iris along with the arillate sections Oncocyclus, Regelia, Psammiris, Hexapogon and Pseudoregelia. They are unlike all these other sections in lacking the fleshy, white aril on their seeds but they are also in general easier to cultivate than these other groups. The section is distributed in the wild from Portugal and Spain through the Mediterranean area and Southwest Asia to the Tien Shan. They are all more or less summer-dormant plants, which in cultivation need a well-drained soil, usually alkaline rather than acid, and a site in full sun. We maintain our parent stocks of the larger species planted out in our netting-sided polythene tunnel, where they give us little trouble, though a few are by no means easy to flower well. We grow the dwarfer species in pots for practical reasons but they would probably grow just as well, or better, in a raised bed. Their rhizomes must be planted with their upper surface exposed. They all exhaust nutrients in the soil quickly and if clumps need division and replanting, this should be done in late summer. This is also a good time to sow seeds, though we have had perfectly good results with later sowings throughout the winter.

Seeds are not set on our parent plants without hand-pollination so we can give a reasonable assurance that the resulting seedlings will be the genuine species. Authentic material of the original wild species, such as we offer, is rare in cultivation and we echo Brian Mathew’s sentiments that it is his hope “that there will always be enough ‘species enthusiasts’ to maintain the true plants so that their identity is not lost."

Nomenclature and further information : While we more or less follow the names used in the standard floras for each area involved, ‘Flora Europaea’, ‘Flora of Turkey’, ‘Flora Iranica’ and ‘Flora of the USSR’, we do use the W.R. Dykes 1913 account, ‘The Genus Iris’, for the diverse wild taxa currently ‘lumped’ under Iris germanica. The best concise reference for all the species is still 'The Iris' by Brian Mathew (1981).