Michigan Irises

Named for the Greek goddess of the rainbow, the iris lives up to its billing, its blooms reach across nearly every color a late-spring garden can hold, from deep purple and clear blue to white, gold, bronze, and burgundy bicolors. Each flower is built from three upright petals called standards and three arching lower petals called falls, and many carry a bright beard or signal line that guides pollinators straight to the nectar. The effect is architectural and painterly at once, which is why a single tall stem can anchor a whole arrangement.

Michigan has its own wild irises, and they are worth knowing apart from the cultivated cut types. Iris versicolor, the northern blue flag, is a Great Lakes native that grows wild in wet meadows, along lake shores, and at marsh edges, with a range documented by the USDA Forest Service. Michigan even claims a second wild iris, the diminutive dwarf lake iris (Iris lacustris), as its official state wildflower. The bearded, Dutch, and Siberian irises we grow for the vase are garden varieties rather than Michigan wildflowers, so we raise them by hand on our farmers’ plots instead of gathering them from the wild.

Cut irises open fast and travel badly, a bud that is barely cracked at dawn can be spent by the time a national shipment clears a cooler. That is exactly the flower a local collective is built for. Our member farmers cut irises at the just-showing-color stage the same morning you pick them up, so the blooms unfurl in your vase instead of in a truck. Reserve a DIY bucket for a late-spring event, add a few stems to a custom design, or ask our floral designers which iris type will hold best for your date.