HYB: Suppressed purple in pink

Mary, your subject line expresses exactly what is going on.

The iris is first of all, a pink *and* a violet-blue.  The violet-blue pigment
is normally diverted during synthesis of the pigment into a colorless
"leucoanthocyanin"--"leuco-" meaning "white" or colorless--which would show up
in chemical tests but not be very obvious to the eye.  Irises like this are
"dominant whites" which in TWOI are discussed under "RRA"--flowers with
reduced anthocyanin for any one of several different reasons.

What you have is part of a flower that is normal with the purple or violet
surpressed, but the trigger or enzyme responsible for diverting the normal
synthesis of the pigment got zapped and damaged early in the development of
that rhizome.  It may happen that the increases on the side of the plant where
you have the purple will continue to be purple.

Usually such things occur only as a narrow wedge in one petal, but there are a
number of cases where the "zapped" part includes part of the increase, and the
"sport" or mutation of the original propegates as a stable new type.

I'm sure this is clear as mud.  Just think of the pink as a "non-purple," but
the genetics for purple pigment are still present, just "surpressed" in
expression.  What happened in your flower is that part of the flower grew from
a cell where the surpressor of the purple got damaged and didn't work any
more.

Neil Mogensen   z 7 western NC

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