HYB: February Surprise (now March Surprise too)
iris@hort.net
  • Subject: HYB: February Surprise (now March Surprise too)
  • From: t* s* <t*@yahoo.com>
  • Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2010 04:41:57 -0800 (PST)
I posted some pictures in February at the Iris-Photos forum. They show a seedling that is blooming indoors. It is from the cross: Iris variegata X Iris suaveolens var. rubromarginata. The cross was supposed to be a repeat (almost) of the cross that gave me CLOWN PANTS (which is from Iris variegata X Iris suaveolens var. mellita). Like before, I had to freeze pollen for several months to be able to do the cross. I have four seedlings growing in my basement; these germinated Spring of 2009. I never got around to getting them planted in the ground and it was starting to get cold again, so I decided to keep them indoors over the winter (along with all of my other 2009 seedlings). Obviously this is not ideal, and it's getting pretty crowded under the lights. But now I'm kind of glad that this happened.
In February, I posted that two of the [variegata X rubromarginata]seedlings had two increase fans and that one of these two seedlings was also trying to bloom. The bloom ended up just being a single flower barely emerging from the fan, but it was a bloom nonetheless. Chuck Chapman had commented that he had observed that increase fans starting to grow seemed to be correlated with flowerstalk growth. Chuck's observation is sounding more and more relevant, because now the other seedling with increase is sending up a flowerstalk too! Of all the seedlings that I've had growing indoors for extended periods of time (a year or more), I've never had any send up any kind of flowerstalks before. Some of the seedlings I've got indoors right now are much bigger and have been growing indoors for even longer, than these blooming ones. But none of the other seedlings has any increase fans.
So now to explain why I'm glad to have gotten to see this... CLOWN PANTS has a tendency (about half of the seasons) to send up a crop of repeat stalks. These start to bloom several weeks after the main/first flush has finished. However, CLOWN PANTS has never bloomed in the Fall for me. I do have two offspring of CLOWN PANTS now (CRICKET SONG and EASY SMILE) that have bloomed both Spring and Fall consistently for four years now. CRICKET SONG actually even sent up repeat stalks throughout the summer of 2009. So, with these experiences in mind, I really wanted to repeat the original cross that gave me CLOWN PANTS. My hope is that these two new seedlings are showing some of what I was hoping for... a willingness to bloom, even in the absence of normal cues/triggers.
If all goes well, I'll post pictures of the second seedling's bloom at the Iris-Photos forum in a couple of days.
Thanks, Tom

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