" I wish more of them were available to the general public, which the Iris registry largely isn't. One must be an AIS member to access most of it. --"
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You do not have to be an AIS member to register an Iris name, or to obtain information about registered names or Irises.
The whole purpose of the registration system is to make information available to everyone, everwhere-- the nursery industry, gardeners, hybridizers, and the general public-- for everyone's common benefit and education.
The AIS publishes the registrations for each year as a booklet called "Registrations nd Introductions", and publishes a ten year compilation each decade called a Check List, and these records are available for purchase by anyone. The R&Is are available in the spring of the subsequent year. The AIS Storefront sells Check Lists for each decade back to the 1939 edition, and the prices are very modest. They make excellent gifts for libraries.
The team of proofreaders is working on a new ten year compilation as we speak. At this time, under the agreement by which AIS serves as ICRA for Iris cultivars of the non-bulbous kinds, the Society is mandated to continue to publish the registrations information in hard copy. This publication serves notice to the interested world of the registration or introduction of a unique new cultivar.
There is also an electronic edition of the Check Lists on line, by which I mean the internet, which includes several decades, with more information being added all the time. So far as I am aware, this resources is available to anyone anywhere who pays the small annual fee. If I err in this statement, someone who uses it will, I am sure, correct me. I prefer to use the paper copies, myself.
The fees for either the hard copy, or the electronic copy, are charged not to make profit for AIS, but to offset the expenses of the registration activity, and publishing the information to the world. This is not some shakedown racket AIS has cooked up, it is an honor accorded to it by the knowledgeable members of the international plant community, and, like many such honors, it boils down to a tremendous amount work.
I don't like to refer folks to my own essays since I figure that is sort of tacky, but if someone is interested in this subject, and does not understand how AIS came to be registrar in the first place, they might want to look at the second story down on this page.
AMW
