<<Rather than a new book why don't you add a new layer and more information to the existing SIGNA database â a bit like Wikipedia for Irises? You could ask experts to add published papers and articles, individual experience and photographs.>>
Actually, that was on my mind, although there is already a general Wiki for irises owned by the AIS.
I think a SIGNA wiki would optimally be a bit different--more disciplined and less freewheeling. It is my firm conviction that the quality of information one sends forth is at least as important as the quantity. Others have said that nonsense cancels nonsense over time, but I observe that it increases geometrically.
<<Are you aware that the following are available to view in pdf format on the website of the UK Group for Beardless Iris?
A Handbook of Garden Irises by William Rickatson Dykes (1924)
Dykes on Irises, part one - an anthology published after his death
http://www.beardlessiris.org/publications.html
I don't know if you all have access to copies?>>
Many classic early works are available either through the Internet Archive.which is also a good source of periodical literature, or through the Biodiversity Heritage Library, from the Missouri Botanical Garden. I was not aware that either Dykes had been digitized, in whole or part, although both have been republished in facsimile. I had always assumed Dykes on Irises was still under copyright, although it is true a good deal of the material predates 1923.
As for hard copies, many were published on both sides of the pond. I have not, myself, found it difficult to obtain these. My copy of Dykes on Irises even arrived with the separately published Index included. I found an orginal The Genus Iris for three hundred dollars, albeit it is not one with a leather cover.
But you should speak up with all sorts of helpful hints like this because we all are looking for all the information we can get to fuel our passions and enormous amounts of material is appearing all the time.
<<Love reading your emails by the way! Pictures are great too!!>>
Love hearing from you! and that is a nice website you have there. I'm going to settle in the next rainy day and read all your stuff!
Have you any colleague over there growing Iris persica these days? Not the Kew set. If so, would you ask them to contact me, please? I'm trying to document its modern cultural history, and it does have one.
Cordially,
Anner Whitehead
--- In i*@yahoogroups.com, "Bill Moyles" <wmoyles@...> wrote:
>
> Is there a recommended ref(s) to the genus ... taxonomy and
> descriptive/distribution/etc .... online or? Thanks ... I think I may
> be missing a good one ! Bill Moyles, Oakland ....
>
