The Nature of Things

Some years ago, a friend gave me some corms of butterfly iris. (There are several species in the genus. Mine are Moraea grandiflora .) I planted them in a bed that surrounds my old concrete birdbath in the front yard. It's a place that receives quite a lot of shade since it is located between two large live oak trees. The plants formed clumps of narrow, sword-like foliage that remained green right through our mild winters. Even when we had a couple of winters when our temperatures temporarily dipped below 20 degrees F, they still flourished. The foliage grew 2 1/2 to 3 feet high. But the plants never bloomed. I had given up on them ever blooming and decided just to enjoy the lush, structural background they provided in my bed. Imagine my surprise then when I glanced out my window a few days ago and saw what appeared to be a bloom among the foliage. I walked out to the front yard for a closer look, and sure enough, there were a couple of the butterfly-shaped blooms among all that gr...