It has a cord-like rhizome, bright green leaves, long stem and fragrant flowers in spring in shades of blue.

[3] The iris rhizome has been noted by W. R. Dykes (1913) as "almost stoloniferous", by J. K. Small (1933), "the cord-like rootstocks are peculiar", and by R. K. Godfrey and J. W. Wooton (1979), "clothed with coarse, strongly many-ribbed, brown, overlapping scales".

[3] The slender rhizomes,[4] branch very easily creating large spreading colonies.

[5][6] They are generally 1.5–2 cm in diameter with coarse, strongly ribbed, brown, scale-like leaves.

[2] The flowering stalk (stem) is generally taller than the surrounding leaves,[5] and 3–7 cm in diameter.

[10] They occasionally have red-brown edge,[3][6] upright (or sword-like) in shape, and 1.5 to 2.3 cm wide.

[5][4][6] Very similar to Iris virginica,[13] it has very small bristle free, standards (about 1.5 cm long).

It was originally called Iris tripetala by Thomas Walter in Flor.

[25] Iris tridentata is found in Southeastern United States, in regions that have rivers that drain into the Gulf of Mexico.

[3][6] It prefers the habitat of wetlands,[29] wet savannahs,[11] damp meadows,[4][6] damp ditches,[23][4] pine flatwoods, swamps (in Tennessee),[5] bogs (in Florida),[8] and beside the margins of pineland pools[21] or small ponds and streams.