Iris foliage in winter

Since it's in the 40's F today, I took a few minutes to survey the winter foliage character of various bearded irises. Typically the foliage has died back leaving very short leaves in the center of each fan. This first picture shows some of these. I'd removed most of the dead leaves from them a couple of months back when doing some Fall clean-up. But you can see how little green is showing.

And here's the reason I took the pictures... to show the contrast in the relatively "lush" clumps still showing on a batch of purpureobractea hybrid seedlings (two showing at bottom right). 'Harvest of Memories' is a little better than average but still pretty brown. The top two pictures show how seedlings with the same parents (in this case 'Kupari' X 'Rosemary's Dream') can have very different habits of growth. PBF plicata A is nearly completely dormant, while its sibling PBF plicata B has a fair bit of green still after the recent "arctic vortex" weather.