UGLY Irises
- To: Multiple recipients of list <i*@rt66.com>
- Subject: UGLY Irises
- From: S* M* <7*@CompuServe.COM>
- Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 08:34:24 -0700 (MST)
Clarence Mahan wrote:
: So, I must conclude, Sharon, that you are more
: tolerant when it comes to irises than I am.
Tell that to the thousands of seedlings that have been consigned to
erosion-control duty in the arroyo!
I just meant that even the ugliest iris usually has some redeeming feature.
Even those that aren't worth keeping as garden subjects can make an important
contribution to the general pool of knowledge. As for the weird-looking ones,
Gene Hunt's motto was "Just think of the genes it must contain!"
The most hideous seedling I've grown was a 3/4-bred Gene had dubbed "Monster".
It had a huge, floppy form that would have been rejected by the TB standards of
decades past. Its "redeeming" feature? It looked like a white-ground plicata
-- a pattern then unheard of in arilbreds.
Even though it wasn't distributed and doesn't have any offspring, it was an
important factor in the development of my line of tetraploid 3/4-breds. The
experimental crosses I made in an attempt to understand where it came from
produced things like WHIRLWIND ROMANCE, INSCRUTABLE, DARINGLY DIFFERENT, GENUINE
GEMSTONES, THINGS TO COME, CLASSIC ELEGANCE and DOUG GOODNIGHT. And more to
come....
Sharon McAllister
73372.1745@compuserve.com
