Re: [IRIS] Iris recognition: Viewpoints - problems - solutions was reblooming space age luminata

Catherine Button wrote:

Cathy,

While a lot of the ideas in your post are excellent and I bet some are under discussion already, this one idea does have a host of pretty severe drawbacks. Not sure I would be the best at describing them but I would take a shot at it:

<snip>

Thats the whole idea,stimulating conversation and, hopefully, being shot down with better ones. :-)

Michael

My own most extreme idea would be a popularity vote by the membership based on photos. The best of this list forewarded to judges for field evaluation. I feel almost every hybridizer could find a way to furnish a photo either hard copy or digital.

1) Photos. Lets pretend you could eliminate all the problems with color rendering in digital photography. Further lets assume you modified this to say multiple photos. You would certainly need an absolute minimum of 2 photos per season - a bloom and a clump. Then it really needs to be over multiple years and/or seasons if a rebloomer. Some very novel iris don't keep their novelty for all blooms. Ideally, it should be a dozen or so photos over the bloom season to show growth habits, length of bloom, and other characteristics. THen repeat.

2) Too many things don't show in photos. Definitely not enough to make an opinion based only on that. The reason garden visits are important aren't just to add info like bud count, branching, resistance to spot, and many other things - ALL OF WHICH ALSO HAPPEN TO MAKE A GOOD GARDEN IRIS btw, but you have to see what the environmental conditions are that it was grown under.

3) Accuracy. Not to put too fine a point on it, but lets just say that sometimes the bid count in a catalog is a bit optimistic... It would just never make sense for a proud parent to show the worst photos of their babies, or tell the worst characteristics, but sometimes thats just what you need to see before you recommend one to your neighbor.

There's nothing wrong with an online database of photos, that anyone who grows can submit photos to, like the one for roses at http://www.helpmefind.com/sites/rrr/index.php but this would be purely an nice to have source to help in selecting something that you might like to grow in your garden. Unfortunately, popularity doesn't garrantee a quality iris...

the other cathy 

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