Re: Re: Iris abicans

Chuck,

This sounds reasonable to me.  I. albicans probably represents an unusual color among its wild relatives, and it seems reasonable that such a plant might be at a disadvantage when it comes to pollination.  My plants do occasionally set bee pods, but they only have a few mostly scrawny seeds in them.
 
I. albicans is very similar to I. x germanica, and has a similar chromosome makeup to these and many cultivar IB's.  It seems likely that it has similar origins to I. x germanica clones, and similar if not the same parentage.  [Personally, I don't understand why it isn't considered as a cultivar of I. x germanica???]  It should be of reduced fertility, but like I. x germanica clones, it does make pods and apparently fertile seeds sometimes.  It would be very interesting to see the offspring from self pollination of I. albicans (if self pollination is possible?).  It clearly carries the genes for expression of anthocyanin, since it sometimes reverts to "blue", and it would be interesting to see if there is any indication among the offspring as to what it's parents might be.
 
Dave
----- Original Message -----
From: irischap
Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2005 9:40 AM
Subject: [iris-species] Re: Iris abicans


There had been some discusion last year re fertility of albicans
because there were no bee pods with lots of opportunity. It turned out
to be fertile by hand pollination.

A theory re this;
Albicans was propicated and distributed by some arab cultures as
sacred and as a plant to place on a grave. The pollinator of choice
for iris are bees. Bees need a signal to attract them to flowers. This
usually is a dark anthocyanin signal in center of flower or a path
signalsuch as the veining on Iris variegata.  Barring this they need a
signal that is visable in infrared light. It would seem it lacks any
of these signals to attract bees.
On this line a number of the iris plants in the wild lacking these
signals would have almost no offspring and would only be propagated by
rhizome propagation as seems to have happened with albicans, in this
case as the white flower had religious significance to som humans.

Does this make any sense?

Chuck Chapman

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