Cemetery iris or Iris albicans.

April 4th, wow, you get them a lot earlier down there!

I transplanted some iris from an overloaded bed at the house to my comm garden plot. After they bloomed, I noticed a seed pod form on top of one of the stalks. One pod out of maybe 15 separate transplanted root clusters. At some point I knocked off the seed pod when I bumped it, or it fell off. A few days back I found it on the ground, and cut it open. It has 6 pea sized seeds in it. By the looks, it should have had 10, so I may have dropped some on the cutting open.

As I understand it, this would have been sexual reproduction and therefore could sprout a different color iris. As opposed to the rhizome spreading, which I take to be asexual cloning. Do you know if that is true? Is it common? I don't recall ever seeing a seedpod on the iris in the bed this came from.

Yes [mention]JRinPA[/mention], you have sexual reproduction happening in the pod. If you succeed in germinating the seed you will have a new variety for each seed. Wether they are worth growing will be the question.

Is it common to occur, in your experience? I have never taken note of it, in years of that original iris bed. I thinned and transplanted last year to the new spot, and they probably have better nutrition there.

From reading a bit about it online, it seems many people have never seen it, while for others it is all too common and must be guarded against to prevent the seed finding the ground.

I just love Japanese Iris