Re: AIS: Checklists--Biting the Bullet

From: HIPSource@aol.com

In a message dated 6/13/99 8:59:58 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
hirundo@tricon.net writes:

<< In fairness to the authors of the 1939 checklist, remember that they were 
not covering 10 years, but the entire known history of cultivars and species 
iris known in America. >>

There was a good deal more to it than that. 

The registration system as we know it did not exist and had not existed. The 
business of writing up data in a cogent and compact form was nothing compared 
to discovering and assembling the actual data, traveling widely to look at 
catalogs in horticultural libraries, sifting through voluminous corresondence 
and assembling, analyzing, and sorting out the "named" plants themselves. 
Please allow me to provide some information from The Golden Anniversary Issue 
of the AIS Bulletin, January, 1970. 

"Perhaps the most compelling motive for the formation of the American Iris 
Society was the desire to have a registration and recording system....The 
letter of call for organization dated January 10, 1920 lists as the first 
objective 'Complilation of a list of horticultural varieties, with their 
parentage, synonyms, orginators and dates of introduction.' In the 
organization meeting on January 29, 1920, it was noted that 'The confusion of 
names in nursery catalogs was mentioned, as was the lack of proper 
classification or description. To remedy these conditions it was proposed 
that the Society publish a catalog of all varieties in commerce.'  Work on 
the Check lists had been started in 1919...By March 1920 the Check List had 
more than one thousand names, and by May of that year this had grown to 2,300 
names...'In May 1920 the registration of new names was started. As early as 
September there were notations of names which had been changed at the Request 
of the Committee of Nomeclature because the names conflicted with those of 
other irises in commerce, and in November a code of nomenclature was 
published.' In 1921 the Check List had come through six revisions, and 
authoritative descriptions of over five hundred varieties were ready for 
publication. The Check List and detailed variety descriptions were published 
in later Bulletins....In 1929 the Alphabetical Iris Checklist, a volume of 
three hundred pages, was published, as a result of years of painstaking work, 
including the checking and  rechecking of mimeographed checklists and 
catalogs and hundreds of letters to obtain accurate information. This volume, 
with Mr. Gersdorff as Registrar and Mrs Wheeler (Ethel Anson S.) Peckham as 
Editor, stands as a monumental achievement." 

And John Wister tells us in his essay in the same volume "Mrs. Peckham took 
over the early checklists that I had prepared in 1919 and 1920, and used them 
in assembling the plants for the test garden at the New York Botanical 
Garden. She planted 1500 so-called varieties the first year and was able to 
eliminate the names of many of these as synonyms. She then went on to gather 
more irise names of the past and of the new varieties being registered by the 
Society. She edited the 1929 Check List with 12,000 names, and then the 1939 
edition with 19,000 names, with standardized code descriptions and original 
citations, catalog references, and synonyms."     

Th biographical sketch of Mrs. Peckham in the Anniversay Bulletin says:

"PECKHAM, ETHEL ANSON (d.1965). One of the very greats of the iris world. 
Charter member of AIS. Director 1924-24. For years Recorder of Introductions. 
Chairman of early test gardens, where she did monumental work in 
straightening out iris nomenclature. Editor of the monumental 1929 and 1939 
Check Lists. Gold Medal 1940. Gold Medal from the British Iris Society for 
her paintings of beardless species."

She did it all with grit, persistence, intelligence, and profound 
committment...... and no computer.

This hunt and peck typing coming into the modern electronic iris community is 
for you, Ethel Anson Peckham. May we never forget. 

Anner Whitehead
HIPSource@aol.com 

 

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