Re: AIS: HIST: REF: Early Checklists

I don't disagree with Anner's description, nor was I trying to disparage the information in the 1939 Check List. However, unless you understand all the little keys on how to interpret the information, it may as well be encrypted. Classically arcane - known or knowable only to one who has the key. 

John

On Aug 1, 2007, at 11:10 AM, ChatOWhitehall@aol.com wrote:


In a message dated 8/1/2007 1:25:40 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
jijones@usjoneses.com writes:

The  way
information is interpreted in the 1939 Check List is really  arcane.



I do not find it so.  Some of the small strangenesses in it bother me,
because I believe they are the result of someone fiddling around with the truth, but I find the document worthy none the less, and absolutely indispensible to 
one who will learn to use it, and remember to think for one's  self.
The 1939 Check List is an intricate document. I find that using it requires that one give the question at hand one's full attention. It is a tool, like an atlas, or logrithmic tables. or any other technical reference document of its sort, and one must learn to use it well and skillfully. I find this requires patience, and a good deal of practice. One must absolutely read the front matter of the book carefully, and reread it often. One must also respect the 
tool's  limitations.
One place people get in trouble, other than not getting familiar with the material in the front which introduces the book and tells you how to use it, is in failing to remember that the book is really a taxonomic document: It is a book of Iris names, not of irises as such. Like a phone book is not really about people. More expressly, it is a record of the first appearance, or publication, of unique Iris names in relation to unique Iris cultivars. It is 
about words, then, and about words as records  of acts of naming.
People also often run aground because they don't understand that there may be, and often are, relationships between entries. Entries impact each other, earlier determining later, and later impacting earlier, so that the record 
changes over time.
It must be larned, and remembered that Early and Late, and Intermediate and Dwarf, to cite but two instances, do not mean the same thing in the 1939 
Check List as they mean today.
As for the color chart, it was never supposed to do anything other than indicate broad color patterns and I find it does that very well. Here again, one 
must learn to use it, and respect its limitations.

For those needing more intricate descriptions, AIS published elaborate
descriptions written by Robert Sturtevant in the Bulletin at several intervals through the 1920s and 1930s. These were the basis of the descriptions in 
Rainbow Fragments by Shull. Period catalog descriptions--and period
photographs--are a real trap, of course, because the description is unlikely to mention less agreeable features and it was hardly unusual for commercial sources to use the same photograph in several catalogs to represent different cultivars. 
Caveat emptor holds for the responsible scholar, too.

I have heard people vent frustration about these issues for  years.
Accordingly, as I said, I am working on a check list of selected pre WWW2 bearded cultivars having all the information you need, and none of the stuff you don't want, with full descriptions, where reliable information along that line is 
available.

Cordially,

Anner Whitehead
Richmond VA USA
************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all- new AOL at 
http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To sign-off this list, send email to majordomo@hort.net with the
message text UNSUBSCRIBE IRIS


---------------------------------------------------------------------
To sign-off this list, send email to majordomo@hort.net with the
message text UNSUBSCRIBE IRIS
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index