I have probably needles confused everyone by talking about two projects that although closely related have different goals. Both of these projects have been going on in England for about 20 years and they worked together to achieve different goals.
The first was a system of national collections; Its primary goal was to prevent the loss of cultivars by creating collections that would maintain them and if necessary provide stock to any nursery wishing to reintroduce a cultivar if it was lost to commerce.
The second was the Hardy Plant Finder which helped locate cultivars that were in commerce.
Since often a nursery in England was also the collection holder of a given group of plants, they would often be thought of as a primary source for that group. Plants of that group that were in danger of disappearing would often be sent to collection holders of a group. But the national collections first and primary goal was to maintain a collection of a small group of plants so that they would never be totally lost. If we were to do this on a small scale within the Iris Society. The keeper of a national collection would choose for example a species that did well in their garden and they were fond of. They would then assemble plants of that species that they would be responsible to grow to conserve for the country. In some cases depending on the amount of effort the gardener wished to invest or the space they had the plant group might be
only a part of a species. For example, the Agricultural College in Canada where Isabella Preston did her early research on Siberians might wish to maintain a reference collection of the dozen or so cultivars she hybridized and introduced. The secretary for the collections system would then record that this collection existence and receive a yearly update from the collection holder. They would publish a list of the types of national collections of Iris. Hopefully there would be dozens of different types of collections and eventually, hundreds. These would help to prevent a small bit of our iris heritage from being lost. To do this there would also be arrangements worked out for the possible transfer of collections to other holders if the person dies or looses interest. The primary goal is to
prevent extinction of cultivars. Secondarily collection holders often become the expert on their discreet group. Several books, pamphlets etc have been published in England on the topic of a given collection. But not all collection holders will have that much interest.
A source list of plants is somewhat different. Although collection holders might share plants, they are not expected to make them available commercially. But if a plant has disappeared from commerce and it is in a collection, it would be hoped that the collection holder would offer a piece for interested nurseries to propagate.
There is a great deal of honor in being a national collection holder. In England the King holds collections of certain type of trees (who else would have the space). Great estates often hold a collection of interest to their head gardener. Botanical Gardens often hold several collections. But groups such as community garden clubs, grade school classes, and Colleges also hold collections. A large number of limited size collections are held by plantsman and other individuals. Most any person should have the space to adopt a well-defined limited group. The Beauty of the system is that it is a system. In otherwords a central list is maintained of all the types of collections and the plants in them. Someone new to a given group could find a particular plant.
In Iris we already have many gardens that attempt to maintain groups of cultivars. The Sass Memorial Garden for example, or the Presby Gardens. In a sense each hybridizer is creating his own collection. But without the registry and some way of protecting collections they can easily be lost with the loss of the key gardener. It would always be desirable when possible to have redundancy.
If someone would like to act as a secretary recording collections of species and species crosses for such a project within SIGNA I would be in favor. If no one will come forward I will do what I can. The important thing is that the idea is discussed and begun in some small way. I know it is possible for it to be successful and useful from the British experience.
