Iris foetidissima

Raab-Straube, Eckhard von & Raus, Thomas, 2024, Euro + Med-Checklist Notulae, 17, Willdenowia 54 (1), pp. 5-45 : 21

Iris foetidissima L.

N Cm: Crimea: Urban District Yalta, Nizhnyaya Oreanda, 44.46412°N, 34.146639°E, forest, 5 Sep 2003, Levon (photo: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations /67905405); ibid., Foros, Forossky Park, mature individuals with seedlings, 30 Dec 2012, Gayvoronskaya (photo: https://www.plantarium.ru/lang/en/page/image /id/170042.html; Gayvoronskaya 2013); Miskhor, Miskhorsky park, near stream, escaped, 7 Nov 2020, Zorina (photo:https://www.plantarium.ru/lang/en/page/image/id /760954.html; Plantarium 2023); ibid., surroundings of Nikita, 44°30'56"N, 34°14'03"E, 230 m, disturbed ash-oak forest, 7 Jun 2023, Sadogurskiy (photo); ibid., 11 Jul 2023, Ryff (YALT); ibid., Magarach, 44°30'31"N, 34°13'06"E, 125 m, disturbed ash-oak forest, 25 Jul 2023, Ryff (YALT). – This species is native to W Europe and the W Mediterranean (Euro+Med 2006+). Iris foetidissima is widely cultivated as an ornamental plant and sometimes escapes from cultivation. Now it is naturalized in many regions of the world, especially in North America and Australia ( Randall 2017; GBIF 2023; POWO 2023). It has been grown for a long time in the Nikitsky Botanical Garden and in other parks as well as in private gardens along the S coast of Crimea. For the first time in the region, escaped plants of I. foetidissima (erroneously determined as I. musulmanica Fomin ; see following entry) were revealed by the first author in the eastern, abandoned edge of the Massandrovsky Park in Yalta in the second half of the 1980s. Numerous plants of I. foetidissima , together with another adventive species, Daphne laureola L., grow there in a dense shibljak of Carpinus orientalis Mill. and Quercus pubescens Willd , in a ground vegetation layer of Hedera helix L. In 2022 , a spontaneously sprouted plant of this species was found near the settlement of Nikita, approximately 500 m apart from the cultivated population in the Verkhniy Park of the Nikitsky Botanical Garden. In 2023, a population of I. foetidissima in the vicinity of Magarach was examined in detail. Evidently, the population has been growing spontaneously in this place for several decades. To date, it occupies an area of about 200 m 2 and has more than 20 individual clones of different age, of which at least three are generative; they bloom and bear fruit and reproduce by seeds and vegetatively. The largest clones reach 2 m in diam. and consist of 10–15 elementary individuals. Flowering time is in the middle of June. The population grows not far from a stream, in the lowland and on adjacent slopes in a disturbed Quercus - Fraxinus forest. It forms a plant community with Brachypodium sylvaticum (Huds.) P. Beauv. , Clematis vitalba L., Hedera helix L., Rubus caesius L., Ruscus aculeatus L., Solanum dulcamara L. and other mesophytic species. Iris foetidissima is known from a few localities in S Crimea and its populations are small. It persists in the natural flora for a long period, at least more than 30 years, successfully reproducing and spreading by seeds, slowly expanding its range. The species is therefore considered to have become naturalized in Crimea. A. V. Yena & L. E. Ryff