Hello Brian,
I'm glad you're trying some ABs. I think they'll prove to be like other
iris classes where some do well and others not so well and some won't. I'd
think a lot of the arilmeds would do well in colder climates with their
median background, but I think others might surprise people. I find a lot
of them work on speeded up growth. When they break dormancy or when they
are growing toward bloom season, many develope everything rapidly compared
to other iris. That can be beneficial, but can also be a drawback. The
race to bloom sometimes means they escape some bad things simply because
there's less time for those things to occur. A big downside is they also
dwindle faster if they go into decline. Sometimes that happens so quickly
you don't realize it until it's too late to salvage them. However, one of
the true weedy iris here is an AB. There's a clump in a bad location where
some rhizomes got dropped unnoticed when I was dividing.
Always look forward to seeing new things and the photo is the first of the
very few I'll see this year. It's a cross of RARE SPICE X (AT LAST x LUELLA
DEE). This was the second day of bloom after it opened in winds gusting to
40mph. Not really appealing to me. Some interesting aspects to it. It
retained the very dark beards that were a hallmark of the (ALxLD) seedlings
and I like those. The photo doesn't show it, but there's an orange cast to
the color in the falls. Also not clear is the tan midrib on the standards
has a matching tan color patched on the top of the standards. That's an
interesting effect I've not seen before. Still, overall, it doesn't work
for me. There's a sibling that I hope will bloom this year and maybe I'll
like it better. That sibling has actually had better plant growth, but so
far I don't see any sign of a stalk emerging. I'm seeing a lot of that this
year. I'm guessing some things have had to put their energy into survival,
not bloom.
Donald Eaves
donald@eastland.net
Texas Zone 7b, USA
