CULT: Irises Changing Color
- To: i*@onelist.com
- Subject: CULT: Irises Changing Color
- From: h*@aol.com
- Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 11:27:43 EST
From: hipsource@aol.com
Hello, Ed.
Welcome to the list.
As you will have guessed the question you have posed is one that we have
heard before, and one that has been discussed at some length on the list. We
really don't know what to make of reports of irises changing color. There are
clear genetic limits as to how much of this can really be happening without
the influence of outside agencies. The natural and spontaneous appearance of
one differently colored flower or stem in a clump is so rare that the
statistical probablility of an entire clump changing spontaneously is
infinitly small.
Normally in such a situation I'd refer you to the Archives of the list to do
a little private reading but I did a dry run on the subject myself and the
material is pretty well scattered around so I retrieved an answer I wrote the
last time the question arose. If you would like to do more reading check the
archives for the last week in February of 1999. Here is what I wrote.
"This unlikely phenomenon has been reported before and in the past we have
discussed it at length on this list. We have come up with only one possible
scenario that explains it plausibly at this time. Mike Sutton reported that
herbicide damage can alter the color of bearded irises so that they bloom
white the first season after the damage, but that this abates later. The
typical report involvers purple irises turning white although I read of one
woman who reported them all turning yellow. As I recall some other
explanations that have been offerred in the past are 1) more vigorous white
irises overrunning less vigorous purples 2) all purples in a planting not
blooming one year while the whites did bloom 3) Irises dug and only the
biggest rhizomes reset--and the white cultivar made bigger rhizomes so only
white were reset 4) problems with soil elements resulting in failure to
develop color adequately in the purples. Now, a point I made last time this
question arose was that if only the color of the iris has changed then any
other differences--form, height, foliage color, ruffling--should be unchanged
so that it should still be possible to distinguish between different irises in
the planting. I observe further that we have not heard whether these new white
irises look normal in other respects.
The consensus is that chemical factors or damage may possibly affect color in
some way. We think that if the phenomenon was something that the irises were
prone to do it would have been reported in some prominent irisarian's garden
sometime in the last seventy-five years."
So you see, if we hear this, we are inclined to be skeptical. We haave only
heard about mass unexplained color changes from those who are not involved
with iris societies.
What you can do for us is to keep a record of what happens in that bed of
irises in the future. If it is chemical damage, that should pass off. If you
moved only whites, then they should stay white. If you moved a lot and only
the whites bloomed, then some other colors should bloom later. If the soil is
the problem then you should get lighter shades of the original colors. And if
something odd is going on, then your white irises should show a variety of
flower forms, as did the originals. Please keep some records and take some
photos this year. We'd be interested to know what happens.
Anner Whitehead
HIPSource@aol.com
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