ALL PREORDER SPECIES ARE STILL GROWING IN OUR GREENHOUSE - Please note all orders containing preorder species will be held until all plants in your order are ready to pickup or ship. If you would like available plants sooner please make two separate orders.
Light
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Full, Partial
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Moisture
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Wet to Medium
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Bloom
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Early to Mid-Summer
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Color
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Blue, Purple
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Height
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3 FT
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Northern blue flag is a clump-forming herbaceous perennial native to eastern United States and Canada. It prefers rich, medium to wet soil and full to partial sun. In ideal conditions, northern blue flag can spread through rhizomes to form dense colonies. Due to its ability to tolerate a few inches of standing water, northern blue flag is a wonderful choice for rain gardens, pond margins, streambanks, and wet meadows, swamps, and marshes. Its upright, sword-like foliage grows about an inch wide and two to three feet tall. The repetition of this vertical foliage creates a visually engaging texture in garden settings. In early summer, flowering stalks rise a few inches above the foliage, bearing one to a few relatively large, striking flowers. These flowers have a unique six part geometry with three true petals and three larger, petal-like sepals called falls.
These flowers bloom in a spectrum of blue to violet, though the falls are always embellished with prominent purple venation and a splash of white and gold. These blooms attract both butterflies and hummingbirds. The genus Iris is named after the Greek goddess of rainbows, and the specific epithet versicolor means “variously colored.” The word “flag” in northern blue flag comes from the Latin flagge, which means “rush or reed” and here refers to the fact that this species is commonly found in nature among these types of plants. The rhizomes of northern blue flag are dangerously poisonous and caution is advised when working with them.
