Re: HIST: Origin of Early Hybrids

At 08:09 AM 8/17/99 -0600, you wrote:
>From: "Jeff and Carolyn Walters" <jcwalters@bridgernet.com>
>
>> From: James Brooks
>> Of course any species iris, such as <italic>Iris germanica </italic>would
>> also qualify. Hybridized introductions, probably beginning with
>> Honorabile, go right to the beginning of your period.
>
>James,
>
>I am not sure that "hybridized" is the correct term to use with iris
>cultivars originating in the Honorabile-Madame Chereau era (mid-nineteeth
>century). It is my understanding that these cultivars and others of that
>era resulted from sowing the seeds from bee pods and making selections
>among the resulting seedlings - not exactly the process of hybridizing as
>we understand it today, which only began to be practiced towrd the end of
>the nineteenth century.
>
>Jeff Walters in northern Utah (USDA Zone 4/5, Sunset Zone 2)
>jcwalters@bridgernet.com

At least Lemon and his ilk knew one parent. As I remember, Dykes introduced Gold Seal from a plant that just appeared in his garden, neither parent known!
Hybridizing has evolved from man doing the pollen dabbing rather than relying on bees, which are still the most effictive pollinators, but these are still flowers introduced into trade as new varieties, using the hybridizers main tool of selection of which varieties to grow in quantity. Hybridizing has certainly gone through many advances: hand pollination, tetraploidy etc, just as cars have gone from hand cranks to electric starters, and then to automatic transmissions and power steering. But hybridizing, the selection and introduction into trade of new varieties, is still hybridizing, just as a car is still a car, whether a Reo or a Toyota.


James Brooks
Jonesborough, TN
hirundo@tricon.net
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