Swedish irisproblem

From: ohrstrom@algonet.se (henrik ohrstrom)

To Francesca R Thoolen, John I Jones, Anner Whitehead, Mike Lowe and Ian E. 
& Shirley Efford


I have read all your letters very carefully and I have spent  evenings 
looking through all the wonderful iris pictures at the websites of AIS, John 
I Jones, HIPS, World Iris' website and some others.

Now I will try to answer your questions in the order they came.

1.First letter from  Francesca R Toolen:
I have never noticed that the market gardens here have "Garden books", but 
OK, I haven't asked.  I have never seen anything like my Iris in a 
commercial garden.  It never occurred to me to ask in a real botanical 
garden, maybe I should have.

Unfortunately I have no good photo of it and now it is too late, all flowers 
are faded.  The last flower was so badly damaged by snails so it was not 
worth photographing.
But I could see it had a little white beard.
As soon as possible I will send you a picture next spring.

2.Second letter  fr n Francesca R Toolen:

Yes, I think I got your letter in one piece!

Thank you for your advice about irisbooks, I will get those you recommended.
Can I REALLY send a piece of my iris to SIGNA?  I thought there were VERY 
strict rules about sending living plants to USA?

As for Jonkoping, I will tell you all I know about it in a separate letter 
to your own e-mailadress.

3.  Letter from  John I Jones:

I have looked through all pictures on your website.  They are very, very 
beautiful and some of them are rather similar to mine but not one has the 
right colour


 Speed Limit, Recurring Dream, Ravens Quote, Last Emperor, and Emperors 
Concerto all seem to be of violet colour but the colour is pale and thin 
compared to my flower.  Of course, I know it is difficult to get the right 
colour in a photography.

Crimson King is very like but has not the strong colour and my iris does not 
have yellow in the middle of the small white stripes.

4.  Letter from Anner Whitehead, HIPS:

About the length of stalks and leaves:
This rainy summer the leaves have grown to 50 cm and the flowerstalks to 
40-45cm and the blooming has been unusually rich.

About the beard:
Yes, it has a little beard at the top of the bottom petals, a white beard, 
not yellow as Kochii has.

And it has thin, rather short white stripes spreading like an fan from the 
beard.  I saw them the other day when I was out in the rain and tried to 
take a photo of the last, snailbitten flower.  Funny I never noticed those 
stripes before during all these years!  I only enjoyed the wonderful colour!

About the length of the flower:
I have never measured the length of the flower and now I can't because the 
blooming is over but I remember it as rather big, perhaps 8 cm or so.

About fragrance:
I don't think it is fragrant but honestly, I don't know, I can't remember 
ever having put my nose into it because I have never had the heart to pick 
any of these rare flowers.

About the base of the leaves:
I have never seen any purple colour att the bases of the leaves.

About branching:
No, the flower stem does not branch out as a tree.  It usually is one or 
two, possibly three branches high up, one for each flower.

About the climate:
No, irises and other plants do not grow shorter here in Sweden than in other 
areas, we don't have that cold.Apart from high up in the mountains of 
course, where you can find dwarf forms of for example birches and some flowers.

There are lots of irises in the gardens here, both tall, over 100 cm, and 
short, but none like mine.

I have looked at the photos on HIPS Website and Kochii is very like mine 
iris but for the yellow beard.

5.  Letter  from  Ian E. and ---Shirley Efford in Ottawa:

As soon as I can, I will send a photo to Rodneys Website.


Summary:

When I saw the picture of Dusky Challenger on the AIS's website my immediate 
impression was"This is It!" but at second thought I realised that it  
wasn't.  In that picture Dusky Challenger has exactly the same deep violet 
colour as my iris has but it does not have the small, white stripes and not 
the little white beard.

In his book "Tradgardens vackraste blommor" (The most beautiful flowers of 
the garden") Third edition, 1961, one of my mother's garden books, Tor 
Nitzelius, amanuensis at the Botanical garden in Gothenburg, writes about 
irises: "Among them who ought to be planted in the foreground  the most 
conspicuous one is 40 cm high Kochii with its intensive, dark purple 
coloured flowers."
He does not mention the origin of Kochii.  Is  it American?


Thus,  I have learned that my unknown iris probably is rather old, 
"historic"; and it resembles Crimson King and Kochii although it has no 
yellow in its beard, not this rainy summer anyway.  Maybe it is one of those 
after all.

Next year I will send you a photo when it starts blooming again.

Thank You All for taking interest in my irisproblem!

Best regards, Maj Ohrstrom, Sweden.




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