miniature bearded iris time begins

I've become very fond of miniature bearded irises. They bloom very early in the season, when color is most useful, and then their small stature helps them easy to overlook when their bloom is over. Like all irises, their bloom life is very short, 2-3 days at the most, and although a larger plant produces flowers at different times, the overall bloom time is rather short, a couple of weeks at the most. Still, it's early spring color for very little work. 'Autumn Jester' was previously posted and it probably has a few more flowers and it will be done, 10 days overall color, which can be more than the tree peony in a warm year, but still very short compared to a hellebore, and about the same or more than a flowering plum.

It's still a pretty small plant and it could probably use a little more care this year to produce a bigger plant for next year. 

'Alpine Lake' is quite small, even by miniature bearded iris standards, about 4 inches tall. It produces so many flowers that they are a bit crowded. Flowers are oddly colored, being rather grey and with mottled greyish blue and purple.

'Riveting' on the other hand is on the larger side for miniature bearded irises. I remember being quite disappointed last year, when it didn't look like the picture from the catalog. The picture showed the falls to be almost entirely dark purple with a thin white border. Mine bloomed with just the brushing of purple. The plant is also bigger than I wanted, maybe about 10 inches tall.  But it has turned out to be quite vigorous, and floriferous. I've grown very fond of it. It would be easy to be a collector of these dwarf bearded irises, as they do come in a variety of colors (although, as always, I'm only interested in the white to purple range).