It was identified as a separate species by Edgar Anderson, and is one of the three Iris species in Anderson's Iris flower data set, used by Ronald Fisher in his 1936 paper "The use of multiple measurements in taxonomic problems" as an example of linear discriminant analysis.

Unbranched or sparingly branched flowering stalks rise from the basal leaves to a height of up to 0.6–0.9 m (2–3 ft).

[7] The flowers, which bloom May to July, are blue to blue-violet and are a typical iris shape.

[8][9] Iris virginica is native in the United States from Nebraska to the west, Florida and Texas to the south, New York to the east, and the Canadian border to the north.

[2] It grows in wet areas, sometimes in shallow water, including marshes, wet meadows, swamps, river bottoms, sloughs, ditches, bottomland prairies, edges of sinkhole ponds, and in shallow water.