[pbs] Cyan colored Iris?
Lee Poulsen
wpoulsen at pacbell.net
Wed May 17 12:50:48 EDT 2006
As a few of you know, I've been accumulating a (very small) list of
those plants (not just geophytes) that have flowers whose color falls
in the cyan range of the spectrum. Other names for colors in this range
are teal, aqua, aquamarine, blue-green, turquoise. It is a very
striking color to see in a flower and the South Africans have two bulbs
that appear on this list: Lachenalia viridiflora and Ixia viridiflora.
A couple of other plants whose flowers are this color and look almost
unreal are the Chilean bromeliad Puya alpestris and the tropical vine
Strongylodon macrobotrys.
I was slowly thumbing through that new Iris book I mentioned a little
while ago, and in the chapter on Pacific Coast Hybrids, in the
description for the species Iris munzii, it described their typical
color range and then said: "..., but in cultivation they can be
turquoise to deep sky blue." These two colors are often what some
people will use when trying to describe the color cyan. So my
cyan-flower alert went off, and I decided to ask this knowledgeable
group if they have seen these flowers and if what the author is
describing here might be a cyan colored Iris? Does anyone have photos
of it or know where there might be photos of this on the web? Is it
cyan enough to include in the cyan-colored-flower list?
Thanks,
--Lee Poulsen
Pasadena, California, USDA Zone 10a
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