Iris versicolorL.

northern blue flag

WFO wfo-0000784018 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Iris versicolor, photographed by Blake Ross
fig. a Blake Ross, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-13 / obs. 205893076
Iris versicolor, photographed by Eric Bartkowski
fig. b Eric Bartkowski, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205787803
Iris versicolor, photographed by samuellegresley
fig. c samuellegresley, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205198282
Iris versicolor, photographed by Tom Armstrong
fig. d Tom Armstrong, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205007614
Iris versicolor, photographed by Mark Apgar
fig. e Mark Apgar, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205222364
Iris versicolor, photographed by Tom Scavo
fig. f Tom Scavo, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205447472
Iris versicolor, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. g Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203966206
Iris versicolor, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. h Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203984633

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 3,074 observations

Peak flowering in Jun, from 3,074 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 17 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Iris boltoniana Regel
  • Iris caurina Herb. ex Hook.
  • Iris dierinckii K.Koch
  • Iris flaccida Spach
  • Iris picta Mill.
  • Iris pulchella Regel
  • Iris versicolor f. albocaerulea Rousseau
  • Iris versicolor f. murrayana Fernald
  • Iris versicolor f. versicolor
  • Iris versicolor var. blandescens Nieuwl.
  • Iris versicolor var. communis Torr.
  • Iris versicolor var. flaccida (Spach) Baker
  • Iris versicolor var. robusta Farw.
  • Iris versicolor var. sulcata Torr.
  • Limniris versicolor (L.) Rodion.
  • Xiphion flaccidum (Spach) Alef.
  • Xiphion versicolor (L.) Alef.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.