Lars; I am very thankful for you and Edmundas to pass
this information along. It is very unfortunate that
language barriers have undoubtedly caused most of this
information to be unknown. When I hosted Dr.
Rodionenko here in St Louis in 1993 I did not have a
chance to speak with him about astrachanica. My
Russian is non-existent and his English is sometimes
hard to understand unless it is in his writings. He
gave me a couple of small books that he wrote and
signed and it is possible that I have the reference
but I can not even read the Cyrillic title. Some of
the information presented did make it into English in
other references, which is how I knew that
astrachanica should look more like scariosa and pumila
than like the MTB that has been pretending to be
astrachanica. I must be careful because there is still
a very small chance that that MTB could be correct. I
say this because Iris sabina when growing on its
mountain top is always around 8 inches tall but
brought down to gardens grows as an MTB. Still, there
are many other characteristics that make me doubt the
authenticity of the MTB. I checked with the Kew World
Checklist that is online and they also have found your
reference for astrachanica even though they do not
accept the name. When I was doing the research for the
SIGNA checklist these wonderful new tools where not
available and the best that was on the internet was
Index Kewensis, which had many errors. I would love to
be able to study the real astrachanica along with Iris
timofejewii and Iris scariosa. I have started to
reconstitute my collection and will be very excited to
grow many new things when I move this spring to a
larger garden. I will add the information you provided
to the SIGNA checklist which will be revised and
reprinted sometime soon. Thank you again.
--- Lars Høpfner <hoepfner@privat.dk> wrote:
>
>
> Hi Robert,
>
> Herewith some comments from Edmundas to my question.
>
> Med venlig hilsen / Kind regards
> Lars H¸pfner
> Langengen 38, Svogerslev
> 4000 Roskilde
> Denmark
>
> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
> Fra: Edmundas Kondratas [mailto:kondedis@gmail.com]
> Sendt: 31. januar 2008 21:21
> Til: Lars Høpfner
> Emne: [iris-species] What is right and what is wrong
> - I. scariosa syn. I.
> glaucesens vs. syn. astrachanica
>
> Hi Lars,
> it is not exact proposition of Robert that dr.
> Rodionenko has never
> published description of I. astrachanica. From times
> when we
> were incorporated in former USSR, I have xerox copie
> of book
> "Dekoratyvnyje rastenija", volume 1, the part for
> irises (Decorative
> plants). Here is description in Latin which is put
> in this book:
> "I.astrachanica Rodion. sp. nov.-I.astrachanskij (in
> Russ. language)
> Caulis biflorus 10-15 (20) cm alt.; flores flavi,
> violacei vel colorem
> variantes; folia radicalia 15-17 (20) cm lg., 10-15
> (20) mm
> lt.; spathae valvae forma variabiles; capsula 25-50
> (60) mm lg.;
> semina magna, omnia (1000) 42-43 gr.; pollina exinio
> verraculoso.
> In delta fl. Volga (viciniae opp.
> Astrachan)Korshinsky legit.
> Typus: in herbario Instituti Botanici Acad. Sci.
> URSS (Leningrad)
> conservatur (LE)."
> It is also given detailed description in Russian and
> Rodionenko's
> speculations on parentage of it. He confirm that
> species in it's
> evolution is young, maybe hybrid of I.pumila x
> I.scariosa x
> I.timofejewii. The main differences between
> timofejevi, scariosa qand
> pumila is in it's weight of seeds (1000 seeds 42-43
> gr. and 22-23
> seeds in 1 gr. for I.astrachanica against 1000 seeds
> 30-31 gr. and 31-32
> seeds in 1gr. for I.pumila. From I.scariosa it
> differ by structure
> exinio (don't know how it translate in English) of
> pollen. For
> scariosa it is pitted and for
> I.astrachanica-bearded. Differences in
> chromosome count: for I.astrachanica 2n=38, for
> I.scariosa and
> I.timofejewii 2n=24, for I.pumila 2n=30,32.
> Edmundas Kondratas
> Kaunas, Lithuania
>
> P.s. the situation with my E-mail address which is
> registered for
> Iris-species@yahoogroups is that I can get incoming
> messages, but can
> not send out. Maybe it will be interesting for
> others too, also you
> can forward my message to the group.
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
