Lucy I bought a book on irises from Schreiners in my last order, wow you are right about lots of other irises. Some even are from the desert. I then went and bought some seeds of various species to try. Right now I am growing out some little Iris foetidissima lutea (or citrina or other names that might possibly be the same but mean yellow. I had bought some plants from Aitken's Salmon Creek Garden a few years ago. In the package they included some cut off seed pods (these iris are grown for the red berried seedpods). These ones are apparently from a North African location, I figured that would be really dry- I winter-sowed them. The second year they finally sprouted during the winter, and I have some baby plants I am babying in , of course, dry shade. We shall see.
