OT:Re: Iris aphylla - easy clean up

Tom -- We haven't heard much from OT recently, but, upon reading your message, he suggested that if anyone ever attempted to do that, it would probably have been the fabulous German hybridizer Heinz Siebenundfuenfzig, who, back in the days when all irises were short, and as his knees became more and more stiffened with age, began breeding them to grow taller so that he wouldn't have to bend down to pollinate them. His success is measured by the common, though fallacious, reference to tall beardeds as German rises. -- Griff
----- Original Message ----- From: "thomas silvers" <tesilvers@yahoo.com> 
To: "iris-talk" <iris@hort.net>
Sent: Thursday, April 02, 2009 4:31 PM
Subject: [iris] Iris aphylla - easy clean up
I was out cleaning flowerbeds the other day and was noticing just how easy it is to remove the dead foliage of aphylla and its first generation offspring. As I breezed through the clean-up of those irises and then painstakingly had to pull dead foliage from the normal TB's and also some pallida hybrids... I wondered if anyone had ever intentionally tried to incorporate this easily-cleaned-leafless trait into modern irises. I'll bet it's also a big part of the reason why aphylla has been reported by some to be borer resistant - with the leaves coming off so easily, the borer eggs would go with them! 

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