Re: I. brevicaulis won't set seed

Dennis,

If the I. brevicaulis plot that you are speaking of is actually located in
the nursery, then I suspect that the problem is caused by a lack of
pollination.  Think about it.  Rarely are honey bees (and smaller insects)
large enough to pollinate a flower as large as that; it takes a bumble bee
to accomplish the task.  As they can be quite intimidating to customers,
many nurserymen will spray an insecticide or repellant to rid their premisis
of them.  No bees = No pollination = No seed pods!

M. Dean Hunt
Louisville, KY

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dennis Kramb" <dkramb@badbear.com>
To: <Lairis@egroups.com>; <iris-species@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, September 03, 2004 3:09 PM
Subject: [iris-species] I. brevicaulis won't set seed


> I'm cross-posting this message, so some of you might see it twice.  But I
> have a perplexing problem that I think both of these Yahoogroups can help
> me with.
>
> A local nursery specializes in distributing seed of locally collected &
> propagated wild flowers.  They have two enormous patches of Iris
> brevicaulis that must contain upwards of 1,000+ plants.  This spring the
> bloom was glorious, but by September there was only ONE seed pod to be
found.
>
> Now the wild population still exists, but is substantially smaller than
> what the nursery cultivates.  The wild population set abundant seed!  So
> certainly the problem the nursery faces couldn't be related to rain fall,
> or weather, or temperatures.
>
> Do you have any idea what could cause such a pathetic result?  Perhaps
> overcrowding?  (They are indeed quite overcrowded!  If you try digging up
a
> single rhizome you'll get a whole mat of them crisscrossed together 2 or 3
> layers deep.)  Herbicides?  They do not fertilize, so it couldn't be
> overfertilization.  Could it be soil type?  I don't know.  I am totally
> baffled.  I can't comprehend how so many hundreds (thousands?) of plants
> could manage to only produce ONE seed pod!  Do any critters specialize in
> eating iris pods???  mice?  deer?  bugs?  beetles?
>
> They get full sun at the nursery.  They are irrigated weekly.  Could
> chemicals in the water be to blame?  A soil deficiency?  These plants
> increase vegetatively without any problem, and show no sign of stress,
> other than the occasional bout of rust.  They seem perfectly healthy I
just
> can't figure why they refuse to go to seed.  Neither can the nursery
staff.
>
> Dennis in Cincinnati
>
> PS:  I have an article in the upcoming SIGNA issue about these I.
brevicaulis.
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>




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