Re: iris DIGEST V1 #552

I suspect your speculation on lateral bloomstalks has some merit.

Vanity dose this and is in genetics of a number of rebloomers.

Chuck Chapman

Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 11:56:46 -0400
From: Linda Mann <lmann@lock-net.com>
Subject: [iris] Re: REB: blades/fan/stalk formation

Thanks Chuck. Again, I really appreciate your digging up real research
on this stuff and taking the time to share it with us.

Sure explains why there are different "stories" floating around about
timing of initiation of the next cycle's stalk formation.
What I get from this is that bud primordia are formed under one (well, I 
mean <one> for any given genetic makeup/cultivar) set of conditions and
then it takes another set of conditions to make each primordium start
growing into a bloomstalk.

I'm wondering what's going on in a cultivar that consistently produces
lateral bloomstalks on a mother rhizome, always a few days to a week
later than on the terminal.  A very nice habit for plants growing in
late frost prone environments - terminal may get zapped, but the
laterals often aren't hurt, or aren't damaged as much.

In the majority of cultivars (TBs), those laterals would go on to
produce bloomstalks the <following> bloom cycle.  So those cultivars
that produce bloom on laterals of the mother during the same bloom
season might be less able to keep up with enough bloom suppressing
hormones to block bloom in rapidly growing laterals.

And making another speculative leap, those same cultivars might be good
ones to work with re: rebloom, but seems like they would be more likely
to produce erratic rebloomers, more vulnerable to quirky growing
conditions, weird weather.
One thing I'll say for cycle rebloomers - their attempts to rebloom sure 
seem to be more reliable than summer/ever/repeat/"other" [Betty, how
about I call them non-cycle?] rebloomers.  They get frozen out here
nearly every year, but (assuming they do reasonably well here) at least
I can see they <tried> to produce stalks both spring and fall.
Not so for the non-cycle rebloomers here - conditions (whatever they may 
be) have to be just right to get bloom at all, even in spring.

[there's an nice definition/explanation on Wikipedia about plant
primordia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primordia>]
- --
Linda Mann east Tennessee USA zone 7/8
East Tennessee Iris Society <http://www.DiscoverET.org/etis>
Region 7, Kentucky-Tennessee <http://www.aisregion7.org>
American Iris Society web site <http://www.irises.org>
talk archives: <http://www.hort.net/lists/iris-talk/>
photos archives: <http://www.hort.net/lists/iris-photos/>
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