Hooker’s Iris
Iris hookeri
- Plant Type
- Forb (Deciduous)
- Landscape Layer
- Herb
- Sun
- ☀️ Full Sun, ⛅ Part Sun
- Moisture
- 💧 Regular, 💧💧 High
- Soil
- Loam, Sand, Rocky / Acidic
- Bloom
- June, July
- Sociability
- S3 – Small colonies
Pollinator Value
- 🐝 Specialist Bee Host
LLM: S17 matching lines reference Florida species (Perdita floridensis) not relevant to Iris hookeri
- ❄️ Winter Food Source
- Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) consumes Iris seeds and rhizome fragments; genus-level dietary records show 23.5% occurrence in one study. Capsules persist into winter and split to release seeds accessible to ground-foraging birds.
Ecology & Conservation
- Proximity Score
- 1
- Native Status
- ✅ Outaouais ❌ Ottawa ✅ QC ❌ ON
- Closest Direction
- NE
- CEC Eco-Regions
- 5 – Northern Forests, 5.1 – Softwood Shield, 5.1.3 – Central Laurentians and Mecatina Plateau
- Rarity Notes
- Secure in Quebec (S5) with 213 herbarium specimens concentrated along the St. Lawrence estuary and Gulf coast. Not listed under SARA. Nationally ranked N5 in Canada. Globally ranked T5 (as Iris setosa var. canadensis). Range is restricted to coastal Atlantic Canada and Maine; absent from Ontario.
- Rarity Ranks
- QC S5 – Secure
- Migration
- Stable
- Ecological Context
- A maritime iris endemic to Atlantic Canada and the Gulf of St. Lawrence coastline, found on grassy headlands, upper beach borders, dunes, and rocky shores within reach of ocean spray. Its range is strongly coastal, extending from Maine through New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and along the St. Lawrence estuary in Quebec to Newfoundland and Labrador. Herbarium records from Quebec are concentrated in the Saguenay-St. Lawrence corridor and Kamouraska region, well east of the Outaouais.
Edibility & Foraging ℹ
Never ingest a plant unless you have 100% certainty of its identity and have consulted multiple reputable sources. The information provided in the Localeaf Plant Database is compiled from secondary sources for educational and historical purposes only.
Click here for more info →
ℹ
Never ingest a plant unless you have 100% certainty of its identity and have consulted multiple reputable sources. The information provided in the Localeaf Plant Database is compiled from secondary sources for educational and historical purposes only.
Click here for more info →❌ Not Edible
- Foraging Notes
- No ethnobotanical food uses recorded for this species in the Moerman NAEB database. PFAF lists no edible uses. Iris rhizomes are generally considered acrid and potentially irritating.
- Toxicity
-
⚠️ Moderate Toxicity
Not listed in the Cornell poisonous plants database. Most Iris species contain iridin (a glycoside) concentrated in the rhizome, which can cause gastrointestinal irritation if ingested in quantity, but no specific toxicity reports exist for this species.
Seed Source
- NANPS
- NANPS