Naming of irises

Irisborer said:
<<There are few things more embarrassing than showing an iris under the wrong
name (OK, there was the time I wore a turtleneck to work inside out and
backwards, but that was years ago).  Unfortunately, right now there's no easy
way to know who's correct and who's incorrect.  I had a correctly named iris
disqualified for being mis-named and I didn't discover it until months later
when I was going through my show tags to throw them out.  It was not misnamed
- so there was a misinformed judge.>>

I agree, and this is the point I was trying to make in my original posting on
this subject - there is no simple way of knowing who is right (although
obvious mistakes are easily spotted - or should be!)


<<I envision the day when a judge questions and iris... and the person charged
with the task brings up the description - with accompanying photo - on their
laptop computer!>>

Or better still, a DNA profile! The naming of a photo is only as good as the
naming of the plant that was photographed. Also, photo librarians make
mistakes - they are human too! And colour reproduction can not always be
relied upon.
Additionally (and no-one has picked up on this from my original post) because
not all iris breeders are sufficiently discerning, and also several breeders
may be working to a similar goal, there are "shed-loads" (to use current UK
slang) of irises that incredibly similar, and I am always incredibly reluctant
to identify them by a photo alone.
It is a vexed subject, and one that is unlikely to have a simple solution in
my lifetime.

Graham Spencer
croftway@aol.com
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