Re: Source list for Iris species and cultivars

---

Dennis:

Turn's out it is a smaller world than we realize. I was probably one of your first customers for the plant-finder. (looking for Adonis cultivars about 8 years ago). I would suggest that an Iris source list would be a great service for the AIS website. I would bet that any effort put forth by AIS and offered to the Andersen Library would be utilized by them as part of their comprehensive effort at attempting this for all plants in US nuseries. The British Hardy Plant Finder of course predates your efforts and with the encouragement of The Royal Horticultural Society it has been a tremendous success. Perhaps that is the key. I suspect without organizational support at least in the form of publicity such ventures are not used. A source list just for Irises in the USA would be a valuable tool for the Historic Iris Preservation Section. It is especially interesting because it can show how rare a plant is in commerce and whether it is on the verge of disappearing.

Dennis Kramb <dkramb@badbear.com> wrote:

Yup - I launched it about 5 or 6 years ago, maybe longer, but it was never
profitable and attracted very little traffic so I gave up. I still have
the domain name "plant-finder.com" under my ownership, but no site. From a
technical perspective it's a piece of cake. All it required a text version
of a nursery's catalog, but it was an uphill struggle getting them to see
the benefits. In the end I guess they were right, since the traffic was so
low. I kept the domain name figuring that eventually its day would
come. By the way, the site was not limited to US nurseries... it had lots
from overseas as well. That was kindof the motto.... to be able to find
anything from anywhere. Oh, by the way, it was not limited to irises
either. It had all kinds of plants, seeds, bulbs, etc.


At 04:38 PM 7/13/2004, Rodney Barton wrote:
>Bob and all,
>
>Dennis Kramb worked on a system like this for irises. Unfortunately it
>didn't take off, probably because he was doing it as a personal project, and
>didn't get the cooperation of the suppliers. He should be brought into this
>discussion for the technical aspects, esp. considering the success of his
>photo database.
>
>Rodney
>
> > From: Robt R Pries
> > Reply-To: iris-species@yahoogroups.com
> > Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2004 12:35:57 -0700 (PDT)
> > To: Will Plotner , John I Jones
> ,
> > Terry Aitken , Talk Iris , species
> >
> > Subject: [iris-species] Source list for Iris species and cultivars
> >
> >
> > Dear Iris experts;
> >
> >
> >
> > I am sending this to several key people who might have the power to
> implement
> > an idea. Most of you are probably aware of the Hardy Plant Finder, a
> book that
> > lists all the hardy plants offered for sale in England and Europe
> during the
> > last nine years. Serious gardeners use it to find plants which they
> have been
> > looking for and the garden source that offer them.
> >
> > I would like to suggest that a comparable reference limited to Iris
> would be
> > useful for AIS members and for that matter other gardeners who desire
> specific
> > plants. Today with computers it would seem relatively easy to create a
> list of
> > irises offered for sale in the last ten years with the source nurseries.
> > Surely most modern nurseries could provide a list of their offerings in a
> > digital format that could be merged with other lists to provide a list
> of Iris
> > in cultivation and possible sources for these.
> >
> > This seems like exactly the type of thing that should be available on
> an AIS
> > website if we truly wish to promote Iris. It also gives a concept of what
> > cultivars are available or not in commerce.
> >
> > Actually I am astounded that the USA is so for behind Europe and England in
> > such matters.
> >
> >



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