Re: Rainbow Aril/AB #9 - Wm. Mohr

If I remember rightly, the "William Mohr Giant" was something Austin himself came up with.  It was advertised as being fertile, I think, and probably was a seedling.  tr certainly was not an authentic WILLIAM MOHR.  I'm not surprised there was no registration of it.
 
Someone in an off-line post refered to the "P. T. Barnum" character of some of Austin's catalog.  I suspect this "William Mohr Giant" was an example of such.  I was tempted to buy it and my instincts warned me off.
 
The other side of the catalogs lay in the kind of availability and in the photographs Sterling is posting for us.  I remember just aching to have some of the korolkowii clones.  I thought them unbelievably beautiful.  When I got given a bunch of pure aril stock by Archer Carpenter in Boise when he was getting ready to move to the San Jose area I was thrilled to receive not only things like stolonifera, but a substantial selection of OG and RC hybrids.  They bloomed reliably and cheerfully for several years in a summer-dry rock garden I created for them there in Idaho.  The ones that matched up with Austin catalog photos looked just like what Austin published.  I am grateful, Sterling, to see those photos again.  Austin and his catalog did the American iris-buying public a genuine service in promoting the arils.  Fortunately, there are large areas in the western part of the country that *can* and do grow them successfully.
 
Neil Mogensen, once in SW Idaho, now in z 7, western NC

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