Stepping Out vs Jesse's Song

Linda asks:

>Anybody already rooted through ancestry of JESSE'S SONG versus STEPPING OUT
>who'd like to venture a guess as to why (which parents) J S has so much more
>vigor (resistance to all the drought, cold, big and little bug damage that
>lead to rot) than S O?
>
I'd just like to put in a plug for poor STEPPING OUT. Years ago, before I
realized garden plants aren't as self-reliant as fireplugs, I bought a
mail-order collection of five iris which included one SO. I planted all
five in a vine-tangled portion of my yard which the garden hose didn't
reach. I think the soil was mostly hard-pack clay. All bloomed the first
year; only SO bloomed the next. I thought it gorgeous, but then I went to
work at three different jobs for many years and forgot all about it.
Vines crawled over the planting.

Almost *ten* years later, when my mom's involvement with the local Iris
Society began to engage me, too, I foraged through that tangled mess and
dug up about 15 sick-looking rhizomes I found clumped together there. Three
guesses which plant they were.
I reset SO, treated it decently, and every single one of these poor babies
flowered the next spring. Several were dispatched in mid-season by what may
have been hungry crickets, but the rest reproduced.

Now I learn Jesse's Song is even more reliable and plucky than SO? JS must
be a prodigy!

Celia
storey@aristotle.net  USDA Zone 7b
Little Rock, Arkansas ... where sooner or later we learn from our mistakes.
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