Daughter of Stars had the first 2 blooms of the season yesterday, both looked like this. Can you tell from my photo how short the standards are? New blooms today look normal. I am not really surprised they are deformed, we had extreme up and down temperatures this spring, warm days then dropped a few nights to hard freeze, 25 degrees or so. I guess I am surprised they look as good as this.

Frost and such often causes deformed blooms. These strange iris are also called chimera and some can be quite entertaining.

We, also have been having yo-yo weather here. I am not sure if you can see in this picture, but on several irises, the leaves only partially emerged, and then some of them had ripples in them. I have never seen anything like that before.
Also one has a curvy stalk, instead of being straight as it should be.


I guess I don't have a picture of that one.

'Just Crazy' with four falls and two standards.

This may indeed be an interesting year. I have so many Daughter of Stars I rather like the change. I have the same frost damage in a couple others, maybe to a lesser extent.

iciris said:'Just Crazy' with four falls and two standards.

Ha, ha...Just Crazy!

evelyninthegarden said:We, also have been having yo-yo weather here. I am not sure if you can see in this picture, but on several irises, the leaves only partially emerged, and then some of them had ripples in them. I have never seen anything like that before.
Also one has a curvy stalk, instead of being straight as it should be.


I guess I don't have a picture of that one.

I've had this happen on my agapanthus and it was caused by mealybugs sucking the sap out of the foliage. I wonder if a bug of some description is doing the same thing to your iris.

Evelyn,

Several of my irises' leaves had ripples in them, like they had been pleated horizontally. I don't know what causes it, but it is not uncommon.

I also have had curving stalks. In fact, I planted three rhizomes of Louisa's Song next to each other in front of a south-facing stucco wall. They each developed a short, curved stalk, sort of like an S-shape. I assume that was due to variation of temperature, maybe it got too warm. Or maybe it was a nutritional issue? I didn't see any evidence of insects. Other iris planted along the same wall grew straight stalks. What was weird was that each of the Louisa's Song rhizomes developed stalks that were exactly the same shape and height.

Andrea ~ Louisa's Song was doing her own dance to her own song. Just one iris has this curvy stalk. It must be a combination of weather fluctuations and genetics. No bugs on my irises, so far.