Re: HIST: Swerti, the Name

The botanical name came first and would I believe be Iris sweertii but I would have to check this because it is what the original author of the name said it was even if he misapplied the normal botanical rules. The cultivar is Swerti because that is the way it was recorded in the checklist. Cultivar names once accepted are forever no matter whether they were misspelled or not. Today it is against the rules to make a cultivar name out of a botanical name but before 1959 many names such as 'Spuria Maritima' were accepted as cultivar names. My example is especially perverse since the cultivar name included the species name. Sir Michael Foster proposed creating names of hybrids from the roots of  species names, example Paltec for pallida tectorum. His method was extremely popular and so we have many such Iris names but the current rules forbid this use of Latin names in cultivar names. It is a difficult rule to enforce sense Irisarians are confronted with so many grandfathered names
 that break the modern rules. It is important to remember that Botanical names and Horticultural names(cultivars) follow very different rules. Each has a very thick book of guidelines for their respective codes. 

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