Re: HYB: blue ground/pattern

Linda and others,

The blue/violet pigment isn't "switched off" in the non plicata areas.  It is
the other way around.  The pigments are *switched on* in the plicata markings.

Remember, plicata is an allelic series, not a simple "gene" as such.  The
genetics of luminata washes is part of the same series as the rim-colored on
white.  *Both* can occur in the same flower at the same time.  There are four
loci--four chromosomes--with a place (locus) that contains the genetic
sequence starter in DNA coding that leads through a complex synthesis of
pigments to whatever we see as the end result.

Most certainly the wash and the rim patterns can occur together.  That's what
you all have been looking at in the various cv's described in the past several
posts.  If you have a flower that genetically is one glaciata pl-g, one
luminata pl-lu, and two rim-plicata pl, pl you've got a "fancy"--as they used
to be called.  If the luminata wash over the falls and standards is reasonably
smooth, the flower looks like a blue- or violet-ground plicata.  If this were
not the case, there's an awful lot of varieties in iris history and
registrations that "couldn't" exist--but do.

The way the pl series of genes seems to work is that there is a switch that
allows anthocyanin synthesis in varying degrees in those areas of the layer in
which anthocyanins occur.  Different cells in different areas have the various
"on" switches governed by different alleles in the pl series.  More than one
"on" appears to be possible in the same cell--as in the blue-ground ones.
That ground color continues to near the fall and standard edge--as in plain
and simple luminatas.

It would be good to get Keppel to respond to this because he knows about a
hundred times as much as I do about how plicatas work.  He's been raising
thousands of seedlings from plicatas per year for a half century.

Neil Mogensen  z 7 western NC

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