Re: Vic -- Iris tridentata

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Dear Victor;

            I love the fact that you have called some of my statements into question. I am constantly re-evaluating information that I have about various Irises. When I was doing much of the research for the SIGNA checklist, I would go to the Missouri Botanical Garden library and photo copy the sources. I now have about six big plastic tubs full of photo copies each the size of a file drawer. Unfortunately I tend to be somewhat messy in my filing, so I can not always put my finger on the copies I need. Originally I would embed the references to various bits of information in the checklist, but protests that this made it too difficult to read, made me remove most of those notes. I do maintain a complete bibliography of about 1100 Iris references but sometimes it is not always easy to remember which ones contain what. Much of the work on the encyclopedia has been to restore these referrals of where the information came from. But I regret to say that I can not always quickly provide references.

            I can tell you the source of the chromosome count. It was Goldblatt and Takei (1997). Unfortunately I will have to do some digging to provide the name of the journal. As you undoubtedly know, even good taxonomists have been known to misidentify plants. I always consider the source of information and I never stop questioning even reliable sources. Many of the chromosome counts that appear in literature seem open to question. Some were undoubtedly done on the wrong plant. Until there are several counts made by different investigators I would not put a lot of faith in any. The other complication is that even when plants are correctly identified, the individuals can have variable counts. I always like to use an incredible example. Anthea Stavroulakis in her doctoral dissertation repeated the investigation of her advisor Jyotirmay Mitra and the work he did with Fitz Randolph comparing the chromosomes of Iris Attica, I. pseudopumila, and I. pumila. But she had the advantage of doing it with an electron microscope. In her work she received a cultivar of pumila from a couple of sources and more than one plant. Despite the fact that these plants where all the same cultivar and clonally reproduced, she found three separate chromosome counts. The lesson to be learned is that several to many individuals of a species need to be counted before we can be very confident in our understanding of any species chromosome numbers. 

            Concerning your second point about my mentioning estuaries where tridentata grows. At present I cannot find the source of that information. I checked Small?s discussion of tridentata in Addisonia and noted a couple of interesting thoughts. He mentions a common name, Bay-Iris. Bays in Florida have a different meaning than we normally think and perhaps my mind made a connection that didn?t exist. He also mentioned that Iris tridentata has two different forms one that is in drainages to the Gulf of Mexico and another that is in drainages to the Atlantic Ocean. He did not elaborate how these two forms were different. I am really curious now as to what these differences might be.

            When writing e-mails, I often write off the top of my head and do not check every bit of information as I would do in writing an article. As I remember several people have speculated that tridentata is not closely related to setosa. The characteristic of reduced standards occurs in several other species and is probably not a good indication of relationship. For example Iris danfordiae a bulbous Iris has a similar character. To show how bad mistakes taxonomists can make, there is a website from the department of Agriculture that claims to show a picture of Iris tridentata and has danfordiae pictured. Obviously the taxonomists was using the bristle-like standards to key the plant and did not read for enough.

To: Robert R. Pries

 

The last 5 months I have been so involved with non iris activities that I have been unable to digest many of the stimulating comments on the iris-species forum.  With a little more free time now I have been going back and reviewing some of the comments on the forum. I apologize for taking so long to make a comment on two of your postings.

 

I read with great interest your two emails of February 25, on [iris-species] setosa, hookeri, tridentata, var. canandensis and var. arctica.  These were in response to ?tesilvers? request ?could someone shed some light on the current taxonomic view of these irises? You state that tridentata seems to occur in brackish coastal backwater in the South.  In the Florida panhandle, the populations of tridentata that I am familiar with occur in pine flatwoods ecosystems, the types of habitat where pitcher plants are abundant.  I have never observed tridentata growing in what I would consider to be ?brackish coastal backwaters.?  You stated that: ?it has been postulated that Iris tridentata, chromosomes = 40 may be more closely related to Louisiana irises.?  I had previously inquired what the 2n number for tridentata was.  And no one seemed to know.  Do you happen to know the source for the 2n = 40? 

 

I am very familiar with both wild and garden population of Louisiana type of irises and Florida panhandle populations of tridentata and I grow a good number of Louisiana wild type irises and tridentata irises in my garden.  The morphology, growth habits and everything is so different between the Louisiana and tridentata irises that I have a very difficult time believing that they are related.  I am aware that the types of observations that I am basing this on can be misleading.   Could you shed a little more light on why it has been postulated that tridentata could be more closely related to Louisiana irises than the setosa clan.

 

You state relative to tridentata that ?there is no reason to assume that it would not be hardy further North but No one has this data.?  I would guess from what I know of its growth habits that it would be hardy much further north; however, when data are collected, one often finds their guesses wrong.

 

Vic

 

Victor W. Lambou

272 Pine Lane

Crawfordville, FL 32327

Zone 8b