Kazakhstan follow up [1 Attachment]

---

Hi,

I've been back from my Kazakhstan trip for about a week. I have some of the photos organized, but still have work to do.

I did manage to get some better photos of Iris sogdiana. I'm attaching one of them. This bloom shows a hint of lavender, something rare on the plants in this area which were mostly white with occasional faint thin veining on the falls. Iris sogdiana was blooming up to about 2000m. I saw only a few plants at higher elevations. While plants were common at lower elevations, blooms were sparse. I only saw one patch with a number of flowering stalks near each other.

Our hopes of finding Iris willmottianna still blooming at 2500m didn't pan out; a trek several years ago found and photographed one. We found plants at that elevation but all the ones we located were past blooming.

I'll put together a SIGNA article when I have my photos more organized.

Ken Walker
Concord, CA USA