Munz’s iris –Iris munzii
Range:Endemic to a small region in the southern Sierra Nevada foothills in Tulare County, California. 1,800 to 4,000 feet (550 to 1200 m) elevation.
Original collection: Near Springville, Tulare County, California, 1937.
Name: By Robert C. Foster, 1938, for Philip Munz, botanist at the Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Garden and author of several books on California wildflowers.
Key identifying features:
- Large plants with broad (¾ inch), long (20 inches or more) blue-green leaves.
- Tall (2 to 3 feet), unbranched stalks bear 3-5 large lavender flowers in different stages of development.
- Floral tube short and stout.
- Spathes separate, open, ovary exposed.
Flower color: Pale lavender to reddish-purple, often with a turquoise area on falls.
Habitat: Upper foothills blue oak woodlands with a thick understory of annual grass, subject to winter rains and dry heat of the adjacent San Joaquin Valley summer. Usually found growing beside minor drainages, the bottoms and sides of small creek beds; mostly in the shade of blue oak, live oak, buckeye, tall mariposa manzanita, poison oak or similar trees and shrubs.
Comments: Munz’s iris is the largest of the Pacific Coast native iris – tall, straight, strong and stately, features much appreciated when horticulturalists look for desirable characters for hybrid crosses. They typically grow as individual plants, and very slowly.
These elegant plants probably had a much wider distribution during cooler, moister times of the Pleistocene, but now seem to be just holding on in the few remaining areas still suitable for their growth. They are listed as “rare, threatened or endangered” by the California Native Plant Society.
This species also has a turquoise “flash” on the falls, and has been used by several hybridizers to bring this color into their hybrids, most recently by Garry Knipe.