Growth
It is an herbaceous flowering perennial plant, growing to 1-1.5 m (or a rare 2 m) tall, with erect leaves up to 90 cm long and 3 cm broad. The flowers are bright yellow, 7-10 cm across, with the typical iris form. The fruit is a dry capsule 4-7 cm long, containing numerous pale brown seeds.
I. pseudacorus grows best in very wet conditions, and is often common in wetlands, where it tolerates submersion, low pH, and anoxic soils. The plant spreads quickly, by both rhizome and water-dispersed seed. It fills a similar niche to that of Typha and often grows with it, though usually in shallower water. While it is primarily an aquatic plant, the rhizomes can survive prolonged dry conditions.
Large I. pseudacorus stands in western Scotland form a very important feeding and breeding habitat for the endangered Corn Crake.
I. pseudacorus is one of two iris species native to the United Kingdom, the other being Iris foetidissima (Stinking iris).
Read more about this topic: Iris Pseudacorus
Famous quotes containing the word growth:
“Here commences what was called, twenty years ago, the best timber land in the State. This very spot was described as covered with the greatest abundance of pine, but now this appeared to me, comparatively, an uncommon tree there,and yet you did not see where any more could have stood, amid the dense growth of cedar, fir, etc.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“The windy springs and the blazing summers, one after another, had enriched and mellowed that flat tableland; all the human effort that had gone into it was coming back in long, sweeping lines of fertility. The changes seemed beautiful and harmonious to me; it was like watching the growth of a great man or of a great idea. I recognized every tree and sandbank and rugged draw. I found that I remembered the conformation of the land as one remembers the modelling of human faces.”
—Willa Cather (18731947)
“A mans growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends. For every friend whom he loses for truth, he gains a better.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)