Return of the Iris

Cultivating a new generation of Louisiana irises

by

On a cool December day in the town of Jean Lafitte, a handful of volunteers dragged buckets of irises across the Wetland Trace’s boardwalk. The sound of a hammer removing railings resonated in the distance, and rubber boots squelched in the mud as volunteers climbed down into the marsh. Shovels in hand, they flipped aside thick mud and dropped clumps of iris rhizomes into the rich soil, all in hopes that by the coming spring, the irises would take to their new home, producing swaths of vibrant purple and blue blooms. 

A small fishing town south of New Orleans, Jean Lafitte—named for the notorious French pirate who frequented the region in the early 1800s—is mostly made up of swamp and marsh. During the nineteenth century, the area would come alive every spring with the blooms of native Louisiana irises. In recent years, though, hurricanes and other disasters have taken their toll on local flora and fauna. Today, as is the case in towns across Louisiana, it’s difficult to find these native plants growing wild anywhere in Jean Lafitte.

The Greater New Orleans Iris Society (GNOIS), founded in 2000, is aiming to change that. One member, Gary Salathe, has made it his mission to reintroduce native irises to Louisiana’s public places. His iris story goes back a few years, to when he and his wife bought a home on the Northshore, and he set about planting yellow irises around the subdivision’s retention pond. 

“I later found out that the yellow irises are an imposter, an invasive species,” said Salathe. “I kept searching for Louisiana irises and found Patrick O’Connor, the former president of GNOIS. He explained that the ones with a rib down the leaf are not Louisiana irises. Patrick gave me 250 Louisiana iris rhizomes, and that’s how I started.”

Salathe joined GNOIS five years ago and set about learning as much as he could about the native species and the members working to conserve them. The areas where native irises used to grow in Louisiana have been significantly reduced, and Salathe became interested in their conservation. He started seeking out places where existing irises were being threatened by real estate developments, as well as public marsh boardwalks where the plants might be relocated.

“There are very few wild irises in natural habitats where people can safely see them, but we have all of these boardwalks, so why not put them there?” explained Salathe, who has taken the lead on GNOIS’ Louisiana Iris Conservation Initiative. “We have a two-part goal—to rescue irises and to plant them so the public can see them.”

Volunteers would collect irises wherever they could find them: whether from individuals with gardens overflowing with them or from ditches on the side of the road. Things really fell into place when, three years ago, a large rural field outside of New Orleans came up for sale. It was zoned and permitted for development—and in its shallow low spots grew thousands of irises. GNOIS rallied their volunteers and began making regular trips to dig up the bulbs and plant them elsewhere. 

Today, transplanted native irises can be found across South Louisiana  in places like New Orleans’ Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge and Pontchatoula’s Joyce Wildlife Management Area. At the Mandalay National Wildlife Refuge in Houma, GNOIS partnered with Terrebonne Parish 4-H Club Junior Leaders to replant the irises with the help of the Louisiana SeaGrant program. 

The refuges only plant irises that originally grew onsite. Other locations, however, showcase the many varieties of Louisiana irises. Four years ago, GNOIS planted a hundred irises at Mandeville’s Northlake Nature Center. While the original crop grows out, GNOIS continues to add more each year, and today the count is up to around four thousand irises. Visitors can learn about the flowers thanks to a display identifying the five species of native Louisiana iris: I. brevicaulis (zigzag iris), I. fulva (copper iris), I. giganticaerulea (giant blue), I. hexagona (Dixie iris), and the I. nelsonii (Abbeville Red). 

The Abbeville Red is the rarest of the five, only naturally growing in a single privately owned swamp in Abbeville. Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries and the state park system, along with some iris volunteers, have worked with the landowners to bring some of the Abbeville Red irises to Abbeville’s Palmetto Island State Park, where they are currently growing in a protected environment.

The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden in New Orleans’ City Park also exhibits a rainbow assortment of irises, put on display each spring during the GNOIS’ Louisiana Rainbow Iris Festival. The original garden has varieties from around the world, while the 2019 expansion only hosts native species. 

“We also donated some to the Woodlands Conservancy on the Westbank, and we’re doing a test planting at the Louisiana Nature Center in New Orleans East,” added Salathe.

Most recently, GNOIS planted flowers along the oak forest preserve at Grand Isle’s Nature Conservancy and on the boardwalk at Jean Lafitte’s Wetland Trace. 

The Wetland Trace was designed and built by Joe Baucum, so it was only fitting that his widow, Cindy Baucum, volunteered to assist in the Lafitte planting.

“Joe was on the steering committee that started the Master Naturalist program,” explained Cindy. “He was President the last two years of the Greater New Orleans chapter. Joe found a love of nature in Northeast Texas as a boy, and never lost it. Barataria became his adopted home in ’96. He would say, ‘This is where I’m dropping anchor, and I’m never going to leave again.’

“One day he asked the Mayor if he could build a nature park here. He and two other people built the Lafitte boardwalk all by hand.”

Joe passed away in February, and at his funeral service, everyone was asked to take a walk on the nature trail in memory of him. The one thing that was in short supply at the trail was native irises. Months later, Salathe again organized his GNOIS volunteers, which included Cindy Baucum; employees of the USDA; and the Acting Mayor of Lafitte, Timmy Kerner. On that day in December, the group planted a total of 1,000 irises along the boardwalk in Lafitte. The planting was dedicated in Joe Baucum’s name.

With every outreach effort, Salathe and GNOIS make new connections and forge new paths forward. They’ve recently partnered with Common Ground Relief, a nonprofit that switched to marsh restoration after helping to rebuild the Lower Ninth Ward. In addition to the iris rescue dig outside of New Orleans, the group has helped with numerous plantings, including Bayou Sauvage, Big Branch, the St. Tammany Children’s Museum and the Audubon Nature Center. “They mostly plant cypress, but now they are helping to plant irises,” said Salathe. “Their volunteers come from all over the world—Seattle, Miami, New York, Taiwan, France.”  

GNOIS also partners with properties where they can plant, grow, and expand the irises in protected environments until they are ready to go to more public locations. John Folse’s White Oak Estate and Gardens in Baton Rouge, St. Joseph Abbey in St. Benedict and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) near New Orleans’ City Park are just a few of the places supporting the revitalization efforts.

“Our number-one goal right now is to get the irises out of harm’s way,” said Salathe. “We never know when we will get the call that a property is being developed or sold. The second goal is to eventually place these irises in locations where the public can see them to raise awareness of the native irises and their plight in our marshes—where most people can’t go to see them. “

Salathe went on to say that the final goal is to use the irises grown to enhance marsh restoration projects following Mississippi River diversion efforts, set to change huge areas of brackish marsh back into freshwater marshes. “We want to have them increase at each location as a way to build up a future supply for these projects,” he said.  

Nicholls State University, which has been at the forefront of coastal restoration, has also been deeply involved with the GNOIS’s iris conservation efforts. The University has hosted irises transplanted from the original tract outside of New Orleans, and its students are able to research them and determine the best methods for propagating the seeds. 

“We take rare irises and grow them out, grow them in plots,” said Quenton Fontenot, professor and head of Biological Sciences at Nicholls. “It increases the overall abundance and makes them available for restoration. We have mechanisms in place to do genetic studies and can determine which plants require more water or more soil. We study the irises to understand the requirements, and then line up habitats with those requirements to ensure long-term success.”

Fontenot explained how the area below I-10 is a different climate than that of above. People might buy plants from Missouri that could not thrive in Louisiana. By looking at wild specimens and collecting seeds to grow out, they can be commercially sourced for our habitat.

“We don’t want to compete with the private industry, but rather to partner to improve cultivation and production of plants,” said Fontenot. 

When Bayou Sauvage Refuge’s marsh was undergoing its 2016 restoration project, organizers hoped to reintroduce the environment’s native irises, which had all been killed off in Hurricane Katrina. But, “there were no commercial nurseries growing certified approved Louisiana species irises in numbers large enough for even the smaller restoration projects,” said Salathe. “We hope that these irises we are rescuing will be the base stock to allow this to happen. It’s the whole reason we have formed a partnership with Nicholls.”

Now, with spring upon us, the small clumps of green at the Wetland Trace boardwalk, clinging to their new home in thick, marsh mud—their roots have taken hold. Their blade-like leaves have grown taller, reaching for the sky. The native irises have returned to where they belong, and their vibrant blooms once again paint the marsh in purple and blue. 

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