THE BERMUDIANA COMMEMORATIVE COIN

The Bermudiana (Sisyrinchium bermudiana) is Bermuda's national flower. It is a member of the Iris Family. It has a distinctive purple flower with a bright yellow centre in the spring. The flowers range in colour from a very dark purple, to bright violet, to a light bluish-purple. There are also rare cases of Bermudiana plants that produce white flowers with yellow centres.  When it is not in bloom, the plant appears as a cluster of bright green or greyish green, strap-like leaves, up to half an inch wide. The plant often possesses a short underground stem, which provides food storage over the winter period, when leaves die back. 

Bermudianas develop a three part, dark seedpod in June and July. These break open to release lots of small, round, black seeds. Bermudianas can easily be grown from collected seeds. The short-lived flowers must self-pollinate since Bermudianas seed very freely and can become abundant in favourable places. 

The Bermudiana is quite hardy and can be found in a variety of habitats, from sandy beach dunes, to rocky shorelines, and coastal forest floors. It prefers moist soils which provide good drainage and is therefore often found on damp, sandy soils. It is also widely used as a garden plant and will self-seed to form lovely meadows in un-mown lawns.  

The Bermudiana is endemic to Bermuda, but as it is widely dispersed and thriving, it is not listed as a Protected Species.
The oldest known specimen of this beautiful and interesting plant is one collected by J. Dickenson about 1699, preserved in the Sloane herbarium at the British Museum of Natural History. Sisyrinchium bermudiana was given its scientific name when botanists quite wrongly believed that the flower was confined to Bermuda. That changed in 1845 when identical flowers were discovered in western Ireland in sites around Lough Erne and Lough Melvin in County Fermanagh. The taxonomy of this species remains unresolved, but modern genetic techniques will allow comparison of Bermudian plants with the Irish ones to determine if they are the same species.