Re: very tall Iris decora [1 Attachment]

 

I'd say that iris dichotoma has a couple minor advantages in addition to more blooms: it blooms in late summer when it has less competition for attention from iris lovers and it blooms in the evening when people who work outside the home are likely to be home to enjoy it.

As far as bloom count goes, so far I've had 4 blooms on the terminal and 2 each on the branches. I'm thinking I'll get another on each of the branches, but we'll see.

Today I had a lot of blooms on Iris decora clones grown from NARGS seeds 2010 1638 and two blooms on the plant from Nepal. I've attached a photo comparing them. The convention Iris decora has slightly larger, much flatter blooms (two of the standard have yet to fold down) than the plant from Nepal. Flat blooms match the standard description of the species. I'm making some reciprocal crosses (on blooms protected from bees), so we'll see if they are cross fertile.

The bloom stalks I mentioned on the other two clones from Nepal continue to develop. It appears they will be similar in height, but one of them will have 4 branches!

Ken Walker

On 5/31/2018 4:46 PM, Sean Zera z*@umich.edu [iris-species] wrote:
 
Whoa, weird habit! Like a few-flowered Iris dichotoma. Hopefully you'll be able to cross some clones if the others prove similarly tall.

Sean Z

On Thu, May 31, 2018 at 3:20 PM, Kenneth Walker k*@astound.net [iris-species] <i*@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
 

I have some seedlings from seeds collected in Nepal of plants that are either Iris decora or are very closely related (but certainly none of the other three recognized species in that subgenus). The first bloom on a seedling opened two days ago. It opened at the end of the morning and was starting to shrivel by the end of the afternoon - typical of this type of iris. The first photo shows the bloom. It is the right size for Iris decora and looks correct; the blue stripe on the center of the style arms is quite intriguing, though - I don't recall seeing it on blooms or photos of blooms before.

The second photo, however, shows the size of the plant. It is on the right side with a more typical Iris decora on the left. You can see that the leaves are about the same length, but the seedling has leaves fully three times wider than expected. If the Iris decora were in bloom, its flowers would about reach the top of the leaves. The seedling has a flower stalk twice as long as expected. I checked several references; the BIS Species Guide's entry for Iris decora does have a note about some extremely tall plants from Nepal that were grown at Kew. So my seedling is not the first anomaly.

Two more seedling are in bud...

Ken Walker
Concord, CA
USDA Zone 9


Posted by: Sean Zera z*@umich.edu









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