Re: Re: I. pallida loppio

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Dave stimulated a delicious thought in his last comment. He noted that cengialtii and sbsp pallida may overlap and produce natural hybrids. Let me make one point that is not meant to contradict this, but simply to add to a understanding of the present state of confusion we all are in due to a lack of conformation. Taxonomically the idea of a subspecies is essentially a group that would possibly be considered the same as the species but is isolated in some way geographically and is possibly in the process of becoming a new species.  Although not a rigid rule, and perhaps not applied as such in Foster’s time, this theoretical geographical isolation needs further investigation. Is it real or as Dave suggests, not. Just to add to the confusion I will relay something Dr. Colasante related. If I understood her correctly she indicated that pallida like species form a cline or gradient in color as one proceeds along the Adriatic Coast with the darkest at one end and the lightest at the other. Some authors have provided species names along the gradient such as Iris illyrica.  And to add to the geographical question even further some Croatian botanists have named a third subspecies pseudopallida which is distinguished geographically by only growing in valleys while the others subspecies grow on the slopes. Because that is off the top of my head I may have the slopes/valleys backwards. I would love to have the time and money to plot out the locations of these different types of pallida, but sadly I don’t think our present literature is adequate.

Playing catch up here.  Some interesting comments to read.  A few comments of my own come to mind.  Though they don't prove anything.

 

First, a wild species population, or even subspecies or variety, almost always includes considerable variation in characteristics, sometimes it is flower color, sometimes not.  My experience with Iris species so far is that most are rather variable in flower color (some extremely so) when looked at as wild populations.  There is nothing unusual about this.  I. pallida ssp. pallida is well documented to have a moderately wide range of color, but rarely much of any patterning.  Colors include white and varying shades of blue purples and red purples (mostly fairly light).  Thus most look rather "blue" or "pink" (but not quite either).  However, some are rather dark, and one good example of a very typical tall ssp. pallida with quite dark flowers (similar to 'Loppio' in flower color, but just a tiny bit lighter) is 'Floridor'.  I don't know the history of 'Floridor' except that it was apparently introduced by Cayeux and that it was listed as obsolete in the 1939 Checklist (which it is certainly not!).  I seem to remember that it was either wild collected or an old oris root cultivar?  It certainly has nicely scented flowers.

 

I have a number of small clones that look to me like ssp. cengialtii, but I have not documented ancestry of all of them, and a few I would even question the published parentage of, but since they are not listed as pure cengialtii, they cannot be counted.  These tend to fall into two basic types.  Most are darkish shades of purple, leaning toward blue, and some are plicatas of the same basic pattern as "pallida" plicatas.  The only two that are documented as field collected are 'Mostar' and 'Loppio'.  'Mostar' is a tad bluer and a tad lighter than 'Loppio'.  I also grow 'Munich Blue' which is supposed to be from seed from the Munich Botanic Garden, but I don't know the history of the seed.  It may be a field collected clone too. 

 

I think it is fairly certain that 'Loppio', 'Munich Blue', and 'Mostar' are all pure ssp. cengialtii, and all three look distinctly different, yet they are also quite similar.

 

Bottom line is, I would expect variation in seedlings from wild collected plants, would actually be surprised not to see it, and I do not consider variation to be necessarily indicative of hybridization.  Also, except for perhaps I. variegata, I could not imagine what other species might be involved in their ancestry, as they do not approach any other species in characters (at least I don't think they do).  I think hybridization with I. variegata in their ancestry is also unlikely, but perhaps not impossible.  I. variegata wouldn't account for the dark coloring though.  I suspect that the dark coloring is just a normal part of the color variation to be found in ssp. cengialtii.

 

I came to the same conclusions as Robert as to Dykes' reasoning about 'Loppio'.  To me it seemed that Dyke's was declaring that it falls within the normal variation seen in ssp. centgialtii (representing close to one possible extreme though), and therefore it should not be recognized as in any way botanically distinct.  Dyke's also had the advantage of having seen more wild collected ssp. cengialtii than I suspect that anyone in this discussion group has?  I got the impression that Dykes had seen it growing in the wild, but don't remember if that is fact or not.

 

Personally I do consider ssp. cengialtii as quite distinct from ssp. pallida, but probably not so distinct as to be considered a distinct species.  However, I would need to see how they behave in habitat where their distributions overlap to have a strong opinion as to how to classify them.  Published discussions on the matter seem to agree that the two ssp. are not separate and imply that all degrees of intermediacy occur in habitat.