Re: CULT: "Reversion " to White?

In a message dated 98-04-19 01:52:23 EDT, you write:

<<  So the question is, since we know that soil conditions can affect color of
the
 same cv from place to place, could soil, bereft of those micronutrients used
 by irises. and so poor from years of lack of attention, have that much effect
 on color so as to turn the flowers white? >>

This are my current musings along this line--based on NO SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE
WHATSOEVER. The color of irises is genetically determined, but must, in the
tissues, be chemical in nature so that the pigments could conceivably be
reactive. And we do see some fade with age of the bloom, etc. Mike Sutton told
us that some herbicides can render bloom white, but that the plant is fine the
next year. So this change does happen. The rub seems to be persistence of
effect.

I have no trouble believing that a gross chemical shock could affect the
blooms in some way for one year, but I see no reason why this effect would
persist in the increase or be visually uniform. With the question of nutrient
deficiencies, the issue for me is this: if the plants were so "starved" as to
produce blooms devoid of pigment, do you think they would manage to bloom at
all? 

If anything bizarre like this is really occurring---IF---then it may be
productive to see it not as "turning [to] white", but as the "turning [away]
from other colors--showing loss of other pigments so that white--tissue devoid
of pigments-- is what remains. If something like this happened I wouldn't
expect the tissues to be equivocal in effect.  

Now the really crackpot paranoid thought is that the irises themselves do it
by introducing a a substance into the soil. It is strongly suspected by that
they introduce other allopathic substances, both the bearded irises, and
especially the Japanese.

Just feeding those rumor mills in Richmond,VA where Mother lost all her no-
name 'twenties whites because they were overrun by purple ALCAZAR, but there
is no mystery at all about it. 

Anner Whitehead
Henry Hall  Henryanner@aol.com
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