RE: 'Swerti' spelling

 

AMW,

Your photo looks like "good" cv. 'Swerti' to me.  The flowers of each individual cultivar may vary in size and even in proportions with varied growing conditions, and this one would indeed be HUGE for this cultivar (they would be classed as IB the way they grow in my garden).  However, the markings on the flowers are almost like fingerprints, and they are quite constant within each cultivar, and can often be used to identify a cultivar (or at least eliminate eliminate posibilities).  The flowers in your photo look exactly like 'Swerti' to my eyes.

As for it being referable to ssp. cengialti, I have never been comfortable with that either.  To me it seems a much better fit in ssp. pallida.  The subspecies cengialti has a more delicate appearance and the foliage is different (at least in the ones I've seen), and the flowers are smaller, stems and flowers are more slender and delicate, leaves look different (usually less glaucus and more green-looking) and so on.  To me 'Swerti' looks like typical I. pallida with slightly smaller and more "pinched" than average.  As I recall, it also has the strong grape soda smell of typical pallida, that I don't recall smelling in any of the (admittedly few) cengaltii that I've smelled.  The spathes tend to be a little bit brownish in 'Swerti', but I think way too much importance has probably been put on "brownish" vs. white, and I doubt it is of any significance at all.  I have other I. pallida cultivars that have spathes in varying shades of pale brownish, that are otherwise totally typical for the species.

Dave Ferguson

To: iris-species@yahoogroups.com
From: ChatOWhitehall@aol.com
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2011 10:04:47 -0400
Subject: Re: [iris-species] 'Swerti' spelling

 

You know, Robert, that association with cengialti is something I'm not sure about. Don't we consider cengialti an MTB or pretty close on? Am I misremembering something?
 
I've always understood SWERTI was typically a BB in proportions--that is, short, but not wiry --but an established clump in a fully vetted display collection here in Virginia which had always been happy and floriferous but dumpy bloomed at 35"after transplanting into a position it absolutely adored. See attached, which is a large photo so you can dig the details. This is USDA Zone 6/7, and the plant is sitting on red clay in full sun, grown with no fertilizer. 
 
Note that this plant presents the pinched falls that contemporary experts consider a discriminator for this cultivar.
 
My guess is there have been several small plicatas sailing under this name over the years--how could it not be so?--and I'll go so far as to say I don't know what Swert/Sweert grew, because--- if I recall correctly--- upon viewing the image in the Florilegium, I was seriously not struck by its resemblance to anything I knew.
 
There are all sorts of funny little plicatas in the early seventeenth century still life paintings, so that 1612 is really not a bad date for documentation and cultivation and appreciation of plants in this sort of color pattern, not that that is an authoritative botanical statement, but you know what I mean.
 
Cordially,
 
AMW

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