Dwarf Irises

We were poking around the yard looking to see what was coming up and were surprised to see these little irises hidden by an evergreen shrub. We must have planted the shrub after the irises bloomed and were forgotten. We'll have to dig them up and plant them in a better location where they can be more easily seen. That's the trouble with bulbs, if you don't mark them you lose track and plant something in the supposedly bare spot! We stick plastic forks and knives where we plant them but I guess that method of marking doesn't work. You can see the fork in the picture.

These irises are very tiny and very early beating out all but the crocuses. Certainly much earlier than the daffodils. A nice change from the usual crocuses, daffodils, hyacinths etc. A border of these would be quite nice in my estimation. I don't know the name of these irises but Brecks sells them as dwarf irises.

William T. Hathaway describes a couple of the dwarfs as Iris verna and Iris cristata on his website.

And from the plant expert website a description of various dwarf irises including very nice photos much better than mine unfortunately.