Porch Notes
The Dwarf Lake Iris
Outdoors
Michigan’s state wildflower is a tiny thing — and a true original, because it grows almost nowhere else on the planet.
The dwarf lake iris (Iris lacustris) stands only a few inches tall, but its flowers are a vivid, almost startling blue-violet, blooming along the shore from mid-May into June. Botanists call it a Great Lakes endemic: it is found only on the northern shorelines of Lakes Michigan and Huron — overwhelmingly in Michigan, with a few sites in Wisconsin and Ontario — growing in thin soil over limestone and at the edges of cool cedar shorelines. Its name, lacustris, simply means “of lakes.” Michigan adopted it as the state wildflower in 1998 (keeping the apple blossom as the older “state flower”).
It is also fragile. Shoreline development and the slow march of the forest have shrunk its range, and it is listed as a threatened species. One especially fitting place to encounter it is on the back-dune edges of Bois Blanc Island.
Where to see it
Look along the northern Lake Michigan and Lake Huron shores in late May — places like the Garden Peninsula, the Straits area, and protected islands. Look closely; it's small, and please don't pick it.