It's not at all obvious to me that the AIS or its membership are "biased" in favor of the bearded irises. This has been tossed out as though it were a simple fact, when actually I think it is very much a matter of subjective perspective.
The fact that about half of the classes eligible for AIS are bearded classes has been offered as evidence of this "bias". But how so? It makes sense only if one has some a priori notion that the bearded irises are somehow a small faction of the genus. I don't know how one would go about quantifying such a thing.
Here's one way to put the discussion in objective terms. One could say that an awards system is "fair" to the different types of irises if a new introduction has about the same chance of winning an award irrespective of its type.
I did a quick random sample of two hundred registrations and introductions from 2009. I found that about 83% were bearded and about 17% beardless (I put arilbreds in with the beardless, but there were only a couple of them, so it does not much change the picture). In other words, there are about 5 times as many bearded irises being introduced into commerce each year as all others put together.
Now consider that those bearded irises are in competition for six awards, and the beardless and arilbreds are in competition for seven awards. These means a beardless iris is about 5 times more likely than a bearded iris to receive an award in the current system.
How can anyone claim that this state of affairs does not encourage the development and recognition of the beardless irises?
In an earlier post, I made this same point a different way, but it doesn't seem to have had much effect on the discussion. Maybe this attempt at quantification will make it clearer.
If bearded irises represent 5/6 of each year's introductions, it's a fair guess that they represent 5/6 of the irises acquired and grown by the iris growing public. Is it any wonder, then, that they receive the most attention in the AIS Bulletin, and that conventions are timed for peak TB bloom?
In my view, the AIS is to be commended for promoting the beardless irises *in spite of* their being considerably less popular with the iris buying public.
Any discussion of bias that does not acknowledge the large numerical disparity in the number of irises being bred and grown in the various classes is not very meaningful, in my opinion.
Regards, Tom
