Iris tenax, Oregon Iris

Artist: Sarah Red-Laird

Title: Bee Habitat in Cyanotype 44

Location: Trisaetum’s Coast Range Vineyard, Oregon

Flower: Iris tenax, Oregon Iris

Materials: Cyanotype, barnwood

Field Season: 2022

Composed: 2023

Trisaetum Winery and BGO have been collaborating through the “Bee Friendly Vineyards” program since 2019.  This is a vintner and melittologist-driven collaboration led by Trisaetum’s James Frey and BGO’s Sarah Red-Laird.

Together they are letting data collected from the vineyard’s soil, grapes, bees, flowers, and microbiology inform management decisions. They believe that a vineyard can concurrently produce stellar fruit and create an ecological refugia for some of our most important (and imperiled) pollinators – the bees.

Our collaboration has resulted in decreasing chemical inputs and increasing wildflowers through planting seeds along fencerows and headlands and reducing, or eliminating, mowing and tillage in and around the vineyards. 

Because grapes are self-pollinating, vineyard managers often don’t consider creating pollinator-friendly landscapes.  However, bees have an important and undervalued role outside of cash crop pollination services.  They are also essential in building soil health, though ensuring the reproduction of plants that fix nitrogen naturally and support healthy mycorrhiza communities, essential in grapevine production. 

Bees are an indicator species of a healthy vineyard and an in-tact environment.  Ecologically speaking, a healthy community of bees is an indication of the life-cycle loop coming back together. 

Learn more about the winery here, and make sure to visit for a tasting on your next trip to Oregon’s Willamette Valley wine country!

Iris tenax only grows in Western Oregon and Southwestern Washington. It can grow in a variety of colors, but the most common is purple. “Tenax” means “tough,” another common name for this plant is “tough iris” due to it’s thick and fibrous leaves - which native people used to make cordage.

This plant does not like disturbance and will only grow in areas with good water infiltration and holding capacity. I was so excited to see it growing in two places on the property - within the vine rows and on a shaded hillside opposite the vine rows.

For the last three years moving on the hillside has ceased, creating swath after swath of colorful Oregon native wildflowers, covered in bees.

Mechanical disturbance in the vineyard such as tillage has ended, and mowing has been severely reduced, creating the conditions for wildflowers like the Oregon iris to regrow.

Though I didn’t see any pollinators dive into the flowers for nectar, the large landing pad petals, lined like a runway strip tell me that they are trying to attract some kind of bee or bird.

There were wild strawberries growing on the hill next to the irises, and Ceratina (small carpenter bees) were darting between the two flower species looking for mates.