PlantFiles: Yellow Walking Iris, Apostle Plant
Neomarica longifolia

Beautiful delicate blooms make this an interesting iris. N. longifolia is not winter hardy so it is kept in a hanging basket. Then, protection can be provided in the winter. This one even blooms during the winter season and throughout the year.

This is one of my favorite plants. Very cheerful, blooming abundantly almost year round, if protected from hard freezes. The foliage is upright and seems to dance in every breeze. It's an eye catcher. And way too easy to grow!

One day a few years ago my neighbor and I traded her yellow for my blue (gracilis) over the fence. Like both very much and both do very well. Yellow is hardier and a year round prolific bloomer. I've always let them spread by runner, but can probably collect seeds too as mine currently have many pods. I like both together with yellow in back as it's leaves are more upright and taller, a lighter matte green while the blue's are glossy and curve softly down. They do well in both sunny and semi-shady area of my garden.

I have had this plant for years and shared it with many people. It will die back in the winter, but then a lot of it comes back in the Spring.

I lived in Tampa in the early 1980's, and rented a house with a bricked in flower bed with nothing but weeds. I pulled up the weeds, and at the time I had several large aquariums in my home. When I cleaned my aquariums, I let the water run into the empty flower bed. Suddenly green shoots started coming up all over the flower bed. I had discovered Neomarica Longifolia and have this plant to this day, although I have moved several times. I always took some off-set "pup" plants with me to my new home. Now that I have bought a home, they are all over my yard and I give them to people who ask what type of plant I have. People who kill plants, can raise this plant with ease. Neomarica Longifolia can tolerate more sun than the Neomarica Gracilis, and it can be drought tolerant. Blooms all year long!

In 1989 I inherited a pot of tall upright flexible medium green leaves. I had no clue what it was. The pot was shallow and broken, the plant did not care -- my kind of plant. I set it in the garden in part shade, similar to where I'd found the pot in the previous owner's yard. It rewarded me with cute little yellow flowers for months. It rewarded me with plantlets which grew where each flower had been. As the plantlets grew, they weighed down the stem until the farthest one touched dirt. It rooted. So I popped off some of its mates and stuck them in the ground. They rooted. So I made pots of these plants and gave them away. This plant and I have spent years increasing its population all over the county, ha-ha. It is easy to pull where you don't want it, it eventually forms a foot wide clump. It flowers here until frost stops it. It resprouts as soon as warmth returns. I loved it before I ever learned its name.

The flowers are quite iris like, 2" across, and a nice accent in shade. The plantlet stems are easy to pull from the plant if you don't want more, or just want a neater appearance. The plantlets are easy to grow on, you don't have to wait for them to root on their stem. With adequate water, these are very lush plants. If hit by frost, cut the leaves about 2-3" above the ground, they'll be back.

This is an easy to grow plant. It flowers all spring and summer long. Sends out shoots that lay down and root into baby plants (walking). It looks great around my pond and does very well without fertilizer.

Sold as Louisiania Walking Iris in most nurseries here - zone 10b. Easy to grow, spreads through shoots which lay down - then root.