Guide to farming Red Iris Flowers

Lakeside County is the most convenient place in pre-Searing Ascalon to farm for Red Iris Flowers, because you will always find five flowers, and the monsters are low-level. You can farm all five irises (less than 5 minutes) or go after a single one (less than 1 minute).

Red Iris Flowers can be exchanged with:
 * Professor Yakkington, who wants a lot of them (bouquet of 50 per item, for a Small Equipment Pack or Profession-specific Headgear);
 * Nicholas Sandford (bouquet of five per item, for up to five Gift of the Huntsman);
 * Gwen, to be given her Tapestry Shred.

Five iris run
This run can be completed in less than 5 minutes provided you do not ever stop to fight. Yield is about 60 irises per hour.
 * Start in Ascalon City.
 * 1) Head northwest to Lady Althea's Stage; the first iris is located north of the stage and east of the gate to the Northlands (but is sometimes unreachable).
 * 2) Head southwest past the Bull pond to the Worm field; this iris is located in or near that field, between the pond and Ashford Abbey.
 * 3) Continue south past the abbey entrance; the third iris is located inside the village of Ashford.
 * 4) Head east and then north through the river; the next iris is on or near the river, from the skale lake (near the water mill) to as far north as Gwen's Broken Flute (sometimes even spawning on the path around the village, making it appear that there are two village flowers).
 * 5) Continue north and, if necessary, cross east past the devourer cave toward the entrance to Regent Valley; the last iris can appear anywhere on the river, on the devourer banks, or near the River Drake.
 * Map travel back to Ascalon City after picking up the final flower.
 * A video of this run

Four iris variant
Some players prefer to start in Ashford Abbey and to skip one of the irises in order to save time. This takes less than 4 minutes, also yielding approximately 60 flowers per hour. Some also choose to rezone through Green Hills County rather than map traveling back to Ashford Abbey, with the expectation that it will be quicker to instance a zone rather than load an outpost; however, on a reasonably fast connection any advantage is probably more than outweighed by the extra distance that needs to be covered on foot.

One iris spam
This is perhaps the quickest farm in the game (less than 30 seconds): exit Ashford Abbey, head directly to the village, grab the iris and /resign or map travel back to the abbey. Repeat until bored. This method yields 60-120 irises/hour, limited only by your patience and zoning-speed.

An echolocation alternative is to listen for the sound of the drop and head in that direction: sometimes the closer sound (and iris) will be in the worm field (left) rather than the village (right). Rarely, you will hear a forward sound (meaning nearby irises in both areas).