Re: Source list for Iris species and cultivars

---

Christy; That is very much how a system of national collections can work. Over ten years ago I attempted an experiment with the Dwarf Iris Society. At the time there were only about 150 MDB's in commercial lists. There were 1000 MDB's registered. I generated a list of the thousand names about 8 pages and sent this to the 400 members of the Dwarf Iris Society asking that they check off which cultivars they were growing. It turned out that there were 500 cultivars in members gardens. A few were widespread but most were only represented in a single garden and there were 20-30 gardens that had the only plant of a given cultivar. With their help the members propated these and sent plants and two "national" collections were established. We were working on a third when disaster struck the owners of both gardens and the collections were lost. I have often thought it was a good plan that just came at the wrong time. For the last ten years I have been working towards making it possible to do this with species. A collection garden would have to be limited to a manageable sized grouping, enough for a single gardener to handle. This was one of the reasons I created the SIGNA checklist. In the addendum lists by species are found. Some of these could be used to survey membership with the goal of creating national collections. Hopefully there would be at least three gardens taking on each group and they would work to distribute plants between each group so there would be enough redundancy that if one or two gardens failed the third could help re-establish redundant collections. Having a national collection would be prestigious. The collection owner would be without doubt an expert on their particular group. The amount of knowledge that could be gained could be very great. In a sense everyone that has a garden is already conserving plants and learning about them. The difference is that by national collections information is communicated more widely and plants that may be thought of as excess by one gardener might be able to be sent to a collection where they would be conserved for all gardeners.

Hensler <hensler@povn.net> wrote:

Catalogs and sale lists are a starting place especially for the more common
species or varieties.

In our case, we're too small an operation to publish a catalog so put up a
list online. Even though we grow about 40 species of irises, quite a few
plants are in such short
supply that they probably wouldn't be listed during our sales. Others are
less popular varieties within a group so even if the species is listed, the
extent of the collection wouldn't be known unless someone took the time to
ask.

I'd like to see a listing of irises being grown by individuals as well as
nurseries regardless of whether or not they're currently being offered for
sale or trade.

Christy

Skip & Christy Hensler
THE ROCK GARDEN
Newport, WA
http://www.povn.com/rock/

----- Original Message -----

> 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.
>




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