Leaves from last year, what to do with them in the spring?

Hi,
My iris leaves kept a nice form and color all summer, so I left them on. Well now I have a tangled mess of all dead, partially green, and a few mostly green leaves that made it through the winter. What should I do with the partial and mostly green leaves? Will they rejuvenate or should I clip them?

Thank you,
Andrew

I would throw away all of the dead leaves (don't compost them!) and then clip off any diseased foliage and dispose in likewise manner. That is how I deal with the situation come spring. Actually around here I find it necessary to remove dead foliage all through the winter!

I wanted to make sure that clipping green leaves wouldn't hurt the plant. Since the ones from last year are a bit ugly.

In WI you should cut off all of last year's foliage (including anything that is still green) and burn or trash it to eliminate as many borer eggs as possible before they have a chance to hatch.

Forgot about the borer problems you guys have, we don't have them but leaf spot can get pretty bad here. At one time I almost gave up on irises because of it.

I had a friend that lost all of her irises to a borer, are they quite common?

Borers are common in the Midwest and East Coast. They are absent from the South and West.