SPEC: I. cretensis

From:	dkramb@tso.cin.ix.net (Dennis Kramb)

Well, at dawn it was still a bud.  By about 11 o'clock the flower had fully
opened.  By 1 o'clock I was pollenating it.  :)  That thing produced loads
and loads of pollen (unlike my I. attica which produced doodlesquat).

It was indeed purple, and I took a bizillion pictures of it.  Oh, and it
smelled just HEAVENLY!!!  Actually the flower itself strongly resembles the
reticulatas, but the cretensis has rhizomes not bulbs.  (But if they bloom
together again in a few weeks, I'm going to try some crosses.)

Oh, and one other thing.  I was tricked!  The anther is ATTACHED to the
style arm.  All my other irises that I've pollenated were easy.  I just
plucked off the anther with some tweezers and then smeared it over the
stigmatic lip.  With this cretensis, I had to scrape the pollen off gently
with a flat screwdriver and then dump it into the stigmatic lip.  Sometimes
I wish I was just a big fuzzy bee!  Pollenating would be so much easier.
:)


Dennis Kramb; dkramb@tso.cin.ix.net
Cincinnati, Ohio USA; USDA Zone 6; AIS Region 6
Member of AIS, ASI, HIPS, RIS, SIGNA, SLI, & Miami Valley Iris Society
Primary Interests: ABs, REBs, LAs, Native Ohio SPEC and SPEC-X hybrids
(Check out my web page at http://home.fuse.net/dkramb/home.html)



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