Re: Iris virginica 'Alba'

 

Anner: Thanks, I think! There has been so much work to do on the wiki and frankly the only help on species has been by a very few people. You are of course correct that Ethel thought this was a misnamed virginica. The virginica entry at present is very poorly developed. Virginica and Versicolor have been confused often in the literature. Ethel stated plainly her thought and I should have paid attention (I do not multi-task well and was trying to do something else while answering the e-mail.

 

 The fact remains that there are white virginicas and these can be called alba and often have been whether officially described or not. I suspect one can find many such references probably even in SIGNA. When I worked on the SIGNA checklist against my better judgement, I did not include references to my sources. But members of the committee talked me out of that, as being off-putting. I did not expect it to become quite the standard reference that it has. My goal at the time was simply to make people aware of the variation within species and confront the concept that one plant was adequate to convey an image of a species.

 

The Wiki still lacks most of the information in the SIGNA Checklist. I have tried to bring all the Iris classes along at about the same pace. I am eternally grateful to a few people who have entered thousands of tall-beardeds. Now that we are 75% complete on cultivar pages I am encountering severe programing problems. The Wiki is too successful for its Host server. I would welcome some expert advice on servers. Now I still have fall bulbs to plant and it is getting colder. So regretfully I need to get to work.

 

Thanks for watching the particulars. Bob



 

 

Of course, we do need to remember that there are and have been any number of white "forma" of the species Iris virginica Linn. I have grown several that differed markedly in their salients but all conforming plausibly to the accepted definitions.
 
<<Thank you - Google finds absolutely no mention of "iris virginica forma alba" or "iris virginica f alba", which makes it kind of hard to discover its existence. Do you happen to have the year of publication and the full catalog description? Also, the AIS wiki does list 'Virginica, Alba' as a cultivar name.>>
 
Sticky wicket. Really need to see what Ethel thought here....
 
According to the 1929 AIS Check List, page 271, repeated on 1939 AIS Check List, page 359, the Iris which was listed/sold by Van Tubergen nurseries in 1925 was actually "Prob. a white form of I. versicolor." 
 
"Virginica alba" Van Tubergen is NOT  by AIS considered an "approved name,"  that is  a valid taxon. Note that, AIS  might have considered it a valid taxon if the VanT plant HAD actually been a white virginica, although I expect they'd have disapproved it anyway, because, as I said, there is more than one white virginica. 
 
There is no note in the 29CL as to how Ethel or whoever wrote that check list entry came to the conclusion, but given the date, they were not dealing with muddles of the distant past, and the information about this plant may well have come to them informally.
 
<<Forma is a taxon rank under the ICBN, so wouldn't you have to validly publish the name in a scientific journal nowdays?>>
 
Forma are typically considered cultivars and color variants are typically of scant botanical interest on that score alone, so that the procedure for "publishing" would be to give the clone a garden name and register that name with the American Iris Society--unless it is a bulb.  "Publication" would be achieved  through inclusion of said garden name-- with description noting distinguishing features-- in those dated publications issued  by the AIS Registrar's office, with the "author" of the name being the originator of the name, but not invariably the "orginator" of the clone.
 
My take on it.
 
Cordially,
 
AMW

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