Blood Iris (Iris sanguinea)
Description
Iris sanguinea is a rhizomatous flowering plant in the genus Iris and in the Iris series Sibiricae. It is cultivated as an ornamental plant in temperate regions. It is one of the species considered a Japanese iris. It is from Asia, found between Russia, Mongolia, China, Japan and Korea. It has grey green leaves, an unbranched flowering stem and flowers in reddish-purple shades, from blue to blue-purple, red-violet, with a rare white variant.Iris sanguinea is often confused with Iris sibirica, another blue flowering Asian iris. But I. sanguinea has unbranched stems, while I. sibirica has branched stems.It has a thick creeping rhizome.It has grey-green leaves that are more or less the same height as the flowering stems,but as the leaves droop, they appear shorter.The linear, narrow leaves grow between 20-60 cm long and 5-13mm wide.It has a hollow unbranched flowering stem, that grows up to between 30 and 90 cm (12 and 35.5 in) long.The stems bear two to three flowers,at the terminal ends in early summer between May and July.It has three green spathes (leaves of the flower bud), that are reddish at the base, measuring 5-7 cm long and 1 cm wide.It then has a brown papery tip.The flowers come in a range of reddish-purple shades from blue to blue-purple, red-violet, with a rare white variants.The flowers are 6-8 cm in diameter.It has two pairs of petals, three large sepals (outer petals), known as the 'falls' and three inner, smaller petals (or tepals, known as the 'standards'). The large obovate (shaped like an egg), drooping 'falls' have reddish-purple veins on a white or yellowish signal.[The smaller, erect obovate standards are 4-5 cm long and 1.5 cm wide.It has perianth tube of 8-10 mm long, 3 cm long white filaments, yellow anthers, a cylindric ovary 1.5-2 cm long by 3-4 mm wide, and a reddish-purple style branches 3.5 cm long by 5 mm wide.In July and September (after the iris has flowered), it produces a seed capsule, which is ellipsoid / cylindric in form and measures 3.5-5 cm long by 1.2-1.5 cm wide.
Taxonomic tree
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Domain: Eukarya
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Kingdom: Plantae
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Phylum: Magnoliophyta
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Class: Liliopsida
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Order: Asparagales
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Family: Iridaceae
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Genus: Iris
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