Greetings.
Mindful of the enthusiastic
response here to the recent I. nelsonii appeal, I thought I might
just share one of my favorite stories from the interwar AIS
Bulletins, one which I refer to as "Ethel and the Rarebits." It
is just the sort of thing for a winter night, especially for those among us who
like their iris history spiced up with a soupÃon of primal
ooze, grand opera, and machetes.
Ethel, was, of course, Ethel
Anson Steel Peckham, otherwise Mrs. Wheeler Peckham, an AIS notable in the early
decades of the Society. John Wister, the first President, described her as
indefatigable and she was a force to be reckoned with. She masterminded the
AIS Check Lists, and the Trial gardens, and served as honorary curator of
the Iris and Narcissus collections at the New York Botanical Garden.
She was apparently an interesting woman: intelligent, opinionated,
athletic, musical. She also painted, but Iâve never much cared for her
watercolors, finding them lacking the vital spark. From a privileged
socio-economic background, she married a New York lawyer who returned
from the Great War with TB and never worked again. Her own family were woolens
manufacturers. Her son became an iris hybridizer as a child, and a player
of the French horn. Ethel got him the horn to keep his lungs strong when he
contracted polio in the mid-1920s. One of her sisters married a Virginian from
an old family, but went off the rails in scandalous circumstances in Europe, a
story worthy of Edith Wharton. In other words, Ethel Peckham had means, and
connections, and a richly textured life with many responsibilites beyond
AIS. This is an interesting, and highly valuable, article she wrote
for the Bulletin in 1932 about hunting for "rarebits," in this case
the native irises of the Louisiana bayous, with the taxonomist and plant
explorer John Kunkel Small of the NYBG, and assistant curator E.
J. Alexander. They obviously had a wonderful time. Most of the new species
were dismissed by Percy Viosca in fairly short order, but that is another
story.
Happy holidays.
AMW
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"I was met at the station in New
Orleans by Dr. Small and the "Weed Wagon." This famous vehicle, property of the
New York Botanical Garden, is a Dodge chassis with a converted, or rather,
perverted delivery-wagon top. This means two strong doors behind to hold the
collected plants in when the road becomes bumpy. a seat in the middle capable of
holding three at a squeeze, and one for one by the driver. I was introduced to
the driver, John De Winkeler, who was the life of the expedition, the general
handy man who remembered everything that was ever necessary to remember, who was
never discouraged but bobbed up serenely in all weathers, day or night, who got
unbelievable speed out of the old truck and whose sense of humor and nonsense
was unbounding. Born in Quebec, a resident of Miami, in him was brought together
the best that comes from the old and new of pioneering. No botanist, yet knowing
many plants, an intelligent observer, he had a pithy and telling remark for any
occasion.
The work is hard on an
expedition such as this, flowering time is short, much ground has to be covered
in that time, Distances are great, rumors of new irises from widely separated
parts and nearly always "there is one wide river to cross"âon a ferry.
No time was wasted that first
morning; some ladies were to "tag along" so we went to the Municipal Nursery
where we found Mr. Alexander with a color-chart, magnifying glass, etc. making
careful descriptions and measurements of beautiful species and forms collected
several days before. A long trough held the plants, their masses of flowers,
purple, blue, pink, claret, and copper hanging over the side. Just to see that
galaxy of varieties, each perfectly suitable for a garden and none yet known in
horticulture, would have been worth the long railway journey. Mr. Alexander was
struggling with a new color-chart, claimed, of course, by its makers to have
more hundreds of gradations than any previous one, and the same old thing was
happening to him that happens to everybody who tries to fix the colors of an
iris by chart or by any medium,. They did not fit. He said, in despair, "They
are always just between two tones." That precious book went to bed with
him but the colors remained elusive!
We then betook ourselves but a
little way into the outskirts of the town to a veritable paradise of irises.
They grew in swathes in a sort of meadow beset with trees here and there and,
where a swamp began below the boles of great cypresses, they ran out in patches
into the water. This place dries up in summer as these irises would not persist
with water over them all the year and in the north we must grown them in even
drier situations, for water frozen into Iâve among their feet they cannot abide.
I stood off at first, not having opened my trunk, then lost my head on
perceiving a particular beauty, and rushed head and feet long into the muck to
ruin my shoes. The mud is "gumbo," a grey putty-like substance that clings
together and resembles chewing-gum. It will not shake off the plants one digs
and has to be pried loose. It stains all clothing with which it comes in
contact. It clings to your feet and tries to pull your shoes off and succeeds if
you have not the right kind.
The peculiarly sad thing about
these Louisiana irises is that the greatest variation in color is found in that
part of the state that is close to the city of New Orleans, indeed the city has
spread out to destroy many locations and now, where once was a great field of
many acres of gorgeous color, there are only a few scattered patches of irises
among the other "weeds" and the land is given over to a "dump" where repose old
freight cars, beds, boilers, radios, wash-tubs, shoes, everything that nobody
wants and with which an American public loves to decorate vacant lots. One of
our best finds, a yellow vinicolor, was growing just behind three
automobiles which had been abandoned on a corner near a "dog wagon."
The swamps in which these irises
grow dry off very quickly in spring. Places we had almost had to wade thought
and where we had made crossings with logs as a sort of bridge, after two dry
days, were quite negotiable. Nearly all the fields have drainage ditches in them
at wide intervals. In old, long abandoned fields, where naturally the best
patches of irises would be, these ditches were much overgrown with waterplants
and sedges, hibiscus, etc. Sometimes there were willows along them and dead
stumps in the water and snakes draped about upon them. Some places were infested
with Cotton-mouth Moccasins and Rattlers were heard occasionally in the
distance. One innocent-looking field of buttercups, waist-high, (a small
flowered variety but with very thick branching growth) was entirely satisfactory
tome until Mr. Alexander and I met a Cotton-mouth among the buttercups. We
dispatched him with the aid of a trusty machette, but it can well be imagined
how often I ent into such a place without that weapon to beat the bushes and
plants each side and before me as I pushed along! Not only was the machette a
weapon, but a useful tool for cutting the tops and ends of rhizomes off iris
plants. We dug them with a short pick that had a sharp point one way and a sharp
grub-hoe the other. One could never have got the roots up with a spade or
trowel. Those that we did not describe at once rode to the nursery with flowers
on. Others were tied in bundles, labeled and their heads hacked off. Into sacks
they then went to be stored in the "wagon." These sacks were heavy to haul and
sometimes they were sodden wet to leak and dribble down a patient
back.
Before the "bayous" were dredged
and the mud thrown out along the banks there were many irises growing along the
river-sides. Now they are only in patches where mud was not too thick for them
to push through. The species most abundant is probably I. giganticaerulea
and the next I. fulva. Great variations of color are not found
unless these two seem to have been together or else perhaps I. vinicolor
and I. giganticaerulea may have crossed. The latter is a handsome
thing, far finer than the hexagona it was supposed to be for so many
years but one gets bored with it when looking for new things if it appears too
persistently and in some districts it is the only iris in slightâlarge sweeps of
pale blue and rarely, an albino.
While there are certainly many
distinct species there are hundred of forms of them and these forms are usually
what the borticulturalist would prefer for his garden, Vinicolor,
violipurpurea, chrysophoenicea, chrysaeola, regalis, rubicunda, miraculosa,
oenantha are all species of great horticultural value but a pink
giganticaerulea, pale blue and pale pink, very tall and large-flowered
which was discovered in a ditch way "down river" was, to my eye, even more
lovely than some blue creature that caused the real botanists of the expedition
thrills. Several tomato-pink, streaked forms of chrysaeola would look
very well in the garden with the pale blues of giganticaerulea to set
them off.
Roadsides were attractive in
some places with the beautiful large flowers of pink Hartmannia speciosa
(Oenothera speciosa), and we found it in white also and a smaller flowered,
darker red-pink species. Herbertia Drummondiana, an irid with grey blue
flowers on stems about seven inches high, bloomed in large colonies in one iris
filed at the feet of giant thistles more than nine feet tall. These are a pale
pink with silvery foliage, the whole plant ruthless in its scratchings and
tearings, but immensely decorative. Some woodlands were charming to pass
through, with great live-oaks, hollies, "Spanish mossâ and many, many lovely
migrating birds but there were no irises there and so we got by as quickly as we
could to keep Dr. Small from seeing a new palm. I felt jealous of all time put
on other plants, though when were were driving from one location to another,
sugar-cane, rice-fields, potatoes and celotex warehouses held my
attention.
The weather? Yes, I went
prepared for heat so it was frightfully cold and I donned not only my own two
sweaters but two of Mr. Alexanderâs and one night, when we were trying to get
back to "The River" before dawn, to sit on the floor of the truck, head down on
the seat out of the draught was the only comfort forthcoming. A huge conical
water-tower, silvery in the moonlight appeared certainly as a snow-capped
mountain and I thought we have reached the Arctic regions. Yesâit was
cold!
We cannot expect that these
irises, though hardy up north, will grow to the heights they do in this rich
"gumbo." Fulva, ten feet tall was photographed in one place. Who ever
expected to see that species that height? I dug a dark, velvety blue thing they
claimed for a new species (I. iodantha), a flaunting, huge affair to make
Souv. de Mme. Gaudichau and Blue Velvet hang their heads in shame,
and am hoping for the best; but one never knows. Oenantha seems to be the
best grower when brought north and I believe it will prove the Honorabile
of this groupâto grow over all others and exterminate them. It is quite
attractive, wide, flat and floppy, wine -colored and floriferous. We called it
the "floppy vinicolor" at first before it got is real name and it withstands our
winters well without covering. Peat moss seems to be just the thing for these
Louisiana irises. I notice the roots die away after flowering and the rhizomes
can be pulled up easily. After a rain or two the roots grow again, but not from
the extremity of the rhizome furtherest from the stem. That gradually dies away,
withers and dried up so they grow out from a centre and that gradually becomes
empty. They are gross feeders and are in search of new food. They are hungry all
the time like the assistants on a botanical expedition! Never before had I had
to wonder when Iâd see food! A "second-rate dog wagon" appearing in the
wilderness after the objective of our day had been attained and collected was
"enow," but Dr. Small brushed by them before we had made our collections as
obliviously as we the palm-trees! I soon learned to stow a bag of cakes or fruit
under the sacks to be surreptitiously pulled forth and sampled. But it was not
all stern and unrelenting. Mr. Alexander and I made the welkin ring with our
carolings as we bounded along gravelly, dusty roads. We rode with the Valkyries,
we chorused with the Pilgrims, we went to prison with Siberians, we went "Down
the Petersky" and were borne patiently with by the good Doctor who claimed he
never recognized a tune, not even Schubert unfinished, and he always got in the
last word even on that memorable occasion when Mr. Alexander appeared, dragging
by the horn, a large cow-skull I had given him to carry out to the road for me,
remarking, "Hereâs Mrs. Peckhamâs skull," he calmly returned, "Is that all you
brought of her?"
"Hunting for Rarebits II." Ethel Anson S.
Peckham Bulletin of the American Iris Society, No. 44, July, 1932
"Apogons" pp29ff./
