Wild Iris

Here's a favorite wildflower of mine, the blue flag, Iris versicolor. It grows wild in wetlands and along shorelines and has been adopted by gardeners. I saw this one growing by a fresh water ponds at Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge on the New Jersey coast. Is it not stunning? I feel well rewarded for choosing that path. Click to enlarge.

There was a single plant, three feet tall or so, sword-shaped leaves, with one bloom. It reminds me of this from Wendell Berry: "I  dream of a quiet man who explains nothing and defends nothing, but only knows where the rarest wildflowers are blooming and who goes, and finds that he is smiling not by his own will."