Re: bulbous irises

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At present it would be rather hard for bulbous Irises to win the SPEC or SPX award. The first step would be for The AIS registrar to agree to register them. This probably could only be accomplished if we could arrive at a mutual agreement with the KAVB. I do not think this would be impossible. The KAVB is essentially only interested in registering Iris that will be mass produced in the Bulb trade by large corporations. They require a large number of the bulbs of a cultivar to be given to them for testing and trial and only if one of their companies shows an interest do they register the Iris.

Presently small nurseries and specialty collectors have made many crosses or selections of species which they have offered for sale under garden names. These Iris have little interest for the KAVB, and because there is no real registration they generally do not get recorded properly for posterity. We have tried to record these irises in the Iris Encyclopedia. It might be possible to work out an agreement that we could register these and later the KAVB could provide their Bulb Rights which is what they are interested in as I see it.

At Iris shows these Iris can be shown under their species +cultivar name or for Dutch Iris as Iris xhollandica + cultivar name, but they cannot win best in show. Sadly SIGNA was asked to decide whether they should be eligible for best in show many years ago, and I believe SIGNA caved and made the easy but wrong decision.

As far as I know I am they only officer of SIGNA or AIS that has ever communicated with the KAVB. They generously allowed me use of their registrations and images which are now mostly on the Encyclopedia. Communication was difficult in that my Dutch and their English were challenging.