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Re: Vienna Waltz seedling R 30-5

Margie Valenzuela commented and asked, "................I love that color of your seedling!! I'm drawn to that rose tone/color!!  And I love the flush of bluish violet below the beard. It accents the whole flower. Is a good increaser and grower? Was this maiden year bloom for it? Can you tell us about it?"
 
Neil responds: Since the hafts narrow down just at the standards, leaving a bit of a gap, I didn't give R 30-5 preferential treatment last year.  It still sits in the seedling bed where it first bloomed last year.  Yes--that was maiden bloom.
 
Increaser?  It's holding its own where it's at--which is good.  It has some aggressive siblings next to it.
 
I did make crosses with it--both ways--with a closely related relative--R 16-16 from Power Woman X Happenstance.  I have a badly out-of-focus digital of it that I'm ashamed to show.  Below is R 15-68, same parents, reverse order: Happenstance X Power Woman with about the same color, but quite different form:
 
 
Thanks to all the medical issues at work these last three years both the photography and the garden have suffered badly.  R 16-16 and this seedling pictured above were lined out to maximize the increase.  R 30-5 was not.  I may do so this year, and I may not.  I'm keeping it for the very reasons you responded to it, Margie--I, too, love that color. 
 
The out-of-focus shot of the reverse sib was the result of the camera loosing the settings for close-up on which I had set it while still in the house, so the auto-focus gave a nice, sharp rendition of a sib two feet behind 16-16.  I was in too much pain by the time I returned to the house and uploaded the shots to the computer to go back out and give it another chance.  Then the sky opened up and hailed.
 
No amount of twiddling with the photo made it acceptable, but Bill Burleson did work some magic with a torn petal.  I've kept and keep refering to the photo as I make plans for 2005.  The blossom was not yet fully opened when I took the photo, so I am not entirely sure of the form.  It did not bloom this year, but is growing well.
 
Incidentally, I discovered the "R" was misunderstood in these seedling designations.  When I left Idaho in 1981, after making no crosses for two years and not planting any seeds from the three years before that (for complicated reasons which are irrelevant here) the alphabetical year designations from the years I *did* get to make crosses beginning from 1953 had been in alphabetical order.  The three years of unplanted seeds, I'm sorry to say, went into the dump, years P, Q and R.  The last seedlings I had bloomed in the west were from year "O." 
 
So when I began again to be able to make crosses I re-used these letters.  P-year (1999) had twelve recent irises I obtained from Keith Keppel available.  Not all bloomed, but of those that did, two of the crosses I made took, and the seeds from Swingtown X Romantic Evening germinated exhuberantly.  I selected two from the progeny for further work--both of which are involved in these seedlings.  P 1-13 is now registered as POWER WOMAN, and P 1-9, although having a very good flower and stalk, has the unfortunate habit of blooming from too many of its increases, making it impossible to grow commercially. 
 
Q-year had only two crosses, reciprocals between Emperor's Concerto and Direct Flight, and produced nothing of sufficient value to get excited about.  I have saved one fairly wide blue-violet, but probably will discard it this year unless it looks sufficiently better than it had that it warrants use.
 
The R-seedlings, however, result from 79 crosses from which I got 37 good pods, but I cannot read my notes at the moment on seed count.  S, T and U years have been lean years--but at least a few crosses have been made each year furthering the more promising developments from the P and R crops. 
 
The exponential growth of the counts has overloaded my available space (sound familiar?) so I'm looking for a) some ground, b) a healthy youngster who would help do the more tedious work and c) continuing recovery of my former vigor (a vain hope!).
 
That's why I can't answer your question about the R 30-5 seedling posted on the "Re: Venetian Waltz" comment back a few entries.  It still is there in the seedling row, has enough vigor to compete with more aggressive sibs, also saved, but this year may reveal more of its qualities.  A little food has helped several of the R seedlings to look far more dressed up than they did in the seedling bed where they were on near-starvation fare.
 
Just from a hybridizing standpoint, incidentally, all these seedlings follow the same pattern--Swingtown, which is a Schreiner orchid with some complicated non-orchid ancesters mixed into the line X Romantic Evening, which has an incredibly rich mixture of ancestors--including Black Forest about 17 times, I think (I'd have to go back and dig to review that to say the count with certainty), plus an interweaving of related or half-sib seedlings in the manner followed by Joe Ghio in many of his introductions, tracing back both to Mystique and to the common ground of almost all of his irises--New Moon, Gracie Pfost, Ponderosa, etc.  There is a hefty Blyth involvment present also.
 
Then these were crossed both directions with Fogbound (which involves Honky Tonk Blues, pinks of extraordinary quality and much more), plus Happenstance and Vienna Waltz, both siblings from the same cross that produced SOCIAL GRACES, and are grounded on the pinks of Joe Gatty, plus some Joe Ghio input part of which traces back to the pinks of Glenn Corlew, all of which are richly indebted to PINK TAFFETA and other Hall-Fay-Rudolph pinks and creams.
 
I love this mix!  A number of strong, wide outcrosses lay a foundation on which I hope to build.
 
  My plan is now to "braid" the seedlings--crosses back and forth and among the five or six ancestral crosses from the five parents (two sets of siblings plus Fogbound).  There are some with very wide hafts, some with unusual bright rose-pink ANTHOCYANIN colors, not Lycopene, with deep blue, white, yellow, red and mixed-color beards, and some very interesting "reds" of a sort I've not seen before.....I am more than interested--I'm enthralled.
 
Some of the seedlings are also being crossed with Keppel intros from related crosses, such as CRYSTAL GAZER, PARIS FASHION and I hope to be able to use VENETIAN GLASS this year.  I also made a number of crosses with Sterling Innerst's BRAZENBERRY, which has most admirable branching and other good qualities.  There is a smattering of other interesting warm purples and rose-toned irises that are growing here, a few of which have been used in crosses that I may incorporate into this primary plan.
 
Am I having fun?  I sure am.  Now, where in the heck can I plant the babies?
 
Which is more than you asked, Margie, but I think I filled in around the question with possibly supportive information which may or may not be of interest.  The complex of outcrosses ought to maximize the genetic pool in these seedlings, and selecting here in western NC zone 7, with its highly variable weather, puts any iris to a strenuous workout.  Wimps don't thrive.  Even some very high award winners don't thrive.....but some do.
 
Being on the hinge between the NE and the SE with influences shared with TX and MS in another direction, IA and NE in still another, and building on a foundation that is mostly West Coast-bred top-quality stock, what does well here hopefully will do well everywhere.  One can always hope......
 
Neil Mogensen  in notorious zone 7 winters of 7-degrees to 70 and back again in short, sharp changes in western NC mountains
 

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