In 1564, the Flemish botanist Charles de l’Ecluse traveled to Spain, where he found the blue Iris xiphium. He liked its flowers so much that he gathered some bulbs and sent them back home to Belgium. There, they were planted in gardens and hybridized. Unfortunately, those initial new varieties disappeared.
A few centuries later, the Spanish Iris xiphium had made it to the Netherlands. The Dutch bulb firm ‘Van Tubergen’ crossed it with Iris tingitana, an iris from North Africa. The resulting hybrid produced larger and broader flowers than its two parents. It also bloomed earlier, and became known as Dutch iris or Iris hollandica.