Re: Too Many Dalmaticas

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Interesting, Chuck. Thank you for forwarding it. Mahan has stated what I understand to be the current received wisdom.

 

This matter is outside the actual range of the issues I have been analyzing for an article which tangentially involves an interesting iris documented in New Jersey in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, however, I will toss out some passing thoughts.

 

To begin, we might see exactly what Gerard, or Gerarde if you prefer the spelling on his title page, actually had to say. I am referring to the "Gerardus Immaculatus" edition of The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes, sent forth by Thomas Johnson in 1633, the edition generally consulted in the seventeenth century. Note that Parkinson actually predates this edition.

 

Note, please, also, that the dating to "before 1600" appears in the first AIS Check List of January, 1922 in which the entry--page 18-- reads: "[Iris] pallida DALMATICA. TB. (Cult. before 1600.) ..."  I read this to mean it was considered an accepted name for a variety of the species known or believed to have been cultivated before the turn of the seventeenth century. John Wister was the editor of this seminal Check List, the product of the deliberation of a committee of several distinguished experts, including Krelage. In later check lists, the species name was dropped for the names of many varieties, which were styled as cultivars.

 

That some good form of pallida was in cultivation before 1606 is certain. We have at least one still life painting of that date in which it is clearly recognizable. That Linnaeus--- apparently--- did not describe it is a lingering mystery, and the real elephant in the room. 

 

So, what does Gerard say?

 

The treatment of irises begins on page 49 with Chapter 40, entitled "Of the Floure de-luce."  The author offers some general remarks, distinguishing various categories of irises and commenting on names and places. On page 51 he describes

 

 "The great Floure de-luce of Damatia,  [which] hath leaves much border, thicker, adn more closely compact together than any of the other, and set in order like wings or the fins of a Whale fish, greene toward the top, and of a shining purple colour toward the bottome, even to the ground: among which riseth up a stalke of fourte foot high, as my selfe did measture oft times in my garden: whereupon doth grow faire large floures of a light blew, or as we terme it, a watchet colour. The floures do smell exceeding sweet, much like the Orenge floure. The seeds are contained in square cods, wherein are packed together many flat seeds like the former. The root hath no smell at all. "        

 

Writing of this passage in the Bulletin of the American Iris Society for July, 1926, B. Y. Morrison, discussing the irises in the Herbal generally, said: "Iris dalmatica major, which may well be our Iris pallida dalmatica." 

 

May well.

 

The 1939 Check List states that DALMATICA is the name of a collected plant. It says--or appears to say --that it is found in some commercial paper issued by a nurseryman --Cree-- in Surry in 1837. This is critically important.

 

Then there are no records for some decades, until a citation for the magazine The Gardners' Chronicle for July 15, 1878. But when one runs that down, it turns out to be the famous description of irises in a private garden in Tooting, and it reads  "Pallida and its varieties, dalmatica and speciosa. . ."  We can do better than that: The 1858 Krelage catalog lists both Iris pallida, and I. pallida dalmatica. 

 

So, the current understanding --as best I grasp it-- is that either Cree or someone else distributed an entirely different and arguably better plant than Gerard and Parkinson's, and called it "Pallida Dalmatica." Why they would do this is beyond me, although, presumptively, it could have simply been inadvertence. We believe we know this happened because we have a plant that we think fits this interpretation of the record.

 

Dykes was conflicted about the species generally. Among other problems, he had something nice which he called Dalmatica, but he could not find it in Dalmatia.      

 

In The Genus Iris, 1913, he states, "The finest form of I. pallida is that which is known in gardens as dalmatica, although its native locality has never apparently been deterimined."  Elsewhere that year, he wrote that he had found nothing which looked like "dalmatica" in Dalmatia, even in areas in which a good deal of variation was seen in the species.

 

Writing in the magazine The Garden in 1918  ("Iris pallida dalmatica"), he describes the subject as "one of the finest of the older garden irises." He says it is unlikely to be native to Dalmatia, and may actually be a seedling or "hybrid form of the Tyrolean pallida." 

 

Then, in A Handbook of Garden Irises, 1922, he states "The "so-called I. pallida dalmatica is almost certainly a garden hybrid of I. pallida. Nothing in the least like it grows wild in Dalmatia."

 

What he does not offer any insight about is in what sort of garden, or where, it may have arisen as a hybrid, and, more importantly, of what iris or irises it might conceivably have been a hybrid. Surely by hybrid he does not mean to say that it is a superior clone arising from a cross of pallida x pallida? Why would that be a conundrum? If not that, then hybrid of what?

 

 

Attached please find the painting to which I referred.  Enjoy!

 

AMW 

 

 -----Original Message-----
From: Chuck Chapman <i*@aim.com>
To: i*@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Mon, Jun 6, 2011 10:41 pm
Subject: Re: [iris-species] Tetraploid Iris Pallida? PBF