Iris macrosiphon
Bowltube iris
Family: Iridaceae · Type: perennial · Native
Bowltube iris is a California native perennial found in southern Klamath Ranges, northern Coast Ranges, northern Sierra Nevada foothills, and San Francisco Bay Area in open to partly shaded oak and pine woodlands at elevations generally below 1,000 meters. Flowering from March to May, this iris produces cream to gold-yellow or lavender to deep blue-purple flowers with distinctive bowl-like perianth tubes 34 to 65 millimeters long, often veined in darker tones. Growing with unbranched stems up to 15 centimeters tall, it emerges from a rhizome 7 to 9 millimeters in diameter. Its basal leaves are 3 to 6 millimeters wide with colorless bases, while the flower bracts are opposite and enclose the perianth tube. The large sepals are widely elliptic, 4 to 7 centimeters long and 14 to 22 millimeters wide, creating a dramatic flared appearance at the base of the flower.
Habitat: Common. Open to partly shaded slopes in oak or pine woodland
Bloom period: Mar-May
Elevation: generally < 1000 m
Bioregions: s KR, NCoR, n&c SNF, SnFrB.
California counties: Mendocino, El Dorado, Santa Cruz, Placer, Butte, Santa Clara, Lake, Siskiyou, San Mateo, Nevada, Marin, Shasta, Tuolumne, Napa, Trinity, Humboldt, Tehama, Solano, Sonoma, Mariposa, Colusa, Plumas, Yuba, Glenn, Madera, Del Norte, Amador, San Bernardino, San Francisco, Yolo
Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.