Re: Re: *germanica*

I particularly appreciate Robert Pries' contribution to this thread.  His authoritative knowledge and familiarity with the problems of nomenclature and "species" as a concept and technical term is most useful.
 
I find it difficult to understand a "species" as being a sterile cv or even being a group of similar cv's all equally sterile, with hybrid origin involving unbalanced chromosome complements with a substantial number of them unpaired. They are obviously a group, and as far as I'm concerned, simply bearded iris IB's.  I am biased toward the whole concept of "cenospecies," I suppose, which is certainly not how the term "species" was meant in the early years of naming plants.  But neither was it understood generally to apply to a sterile clone.
 
We do have species that have arisen from hybrid origin, but are self-perpetuating, fertile groups of individual clones that have seedlings decidedly of a type resembling their parents and are or have a self-perpetuating genetic pool.  This cannot be said of "germanica."
 
I have seedlings from the *I. germanica* 48-chromosome tetraploid collected in NW Greece, and I noted the offering of a similar set of seeds from Romania similarly designated in this year's SIGNA list.  Since Amas, Ricardii and Macrantha appear to be of uncertain species identification I would be interested to know how these various clones and the 44-chromosome IB's collected from the wild with obvious affinity to them are presently classified. Robert Pries--are you willing to comment on this for our edification?  I hope I am not the only one interested, and I would be especially grateful for your comments.
 
A recent suggestion these all be lumped together as *I. trojana* is one I would hardly favor, as the clone of the latter, obtained from L. F. Randolph, was decidedly different from what I have seen of Amas and most early tetraploids I've either grown or observed in gardens.
 
Since this is an area of particular interest but not the focus of my background or education I realize my opinions and comments have neither authority nor consequence.  I'd still like to know just for the sake of curiosity and puzzlement about this early layer of ancestry of our modern irises.
 
Neil Mogensen   z  7  western NC

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