Iris foetidissimaL.

Stinking iris

WFO wfo-0000783342 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Iris foetidissima, photographed by Derek Winterburn
fig. a Derek Winterburn, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-28 / obs. 201219680
Iris foetidissima, photographed by CorentinD
fig. b CorentinD, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204203410
Iris foetidissima, photographed by Stephen James McWilliam
fig. c Stephen James McWilliam, CC0 1.0 / obs. 197448524
Iris foetidissima, photographed by derek_onley
fig. d derek_onley, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 198271386
Iris foetidissima, photographed by Bartholomeus van der Geer
fig. e Bartholomeus van der Geer, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200464693
Iris foetidissima, photographed by Jon Sullivan
fig. f Jon Sullivan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195878198
Iris foetidissima, photographed by Jon Sullivan
fig. g Jon Sullivan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195887859
Iris foetidissima, photographed by Jon Sullivan
fig. h Jon Sullivan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195885739

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 597 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 597 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 12 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Chamaeiris foetida Medik.
  • Chamaeiris foetidissima (L.) Medik.
  • Iris foetida Thunb.
  • Iris foetida J.P.Bergeret
  • Iris foetidissima var. citrina Bromf.
  • Iris foetidissima var. flavescens DC.
  • Iris foetidissima var. livida Maire
  • Iris foetidissima var. lutescens Maire
  • Iris gaditana Pau
  • Spathula foetidissima (L.) Fourr.
  • Xiphion foetidissimum (L.) Parl.
  • Xyridion foetidissimum (L.) Klatt

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.