Re: Early Bloom

In a message dated 97-03-07 21:58:53 EST, you write:

Rick Tasco wrote
>Temperature is the Key with "most" rebloomers and this includes east
>coast bred varieties such as Sunny Disposition.  In the message I posted
>earlier, I mentioned I had rebloom into Feb and quite a few of these
>were bred in colder climates.  ........
>Also, it is interesting to hear that Ice Sculpture grows well for you
>since it was hybridized by Ben Hagar here in California.

I had gathered that temperature was the key for rebloomers, but I was
actually more interested in the once bloomers - frost damage puts 'most'
rebloomers in a category of irises which do not interest me.  (heresy!).
  But I would like to hear more about that word in quotes "most" - do you
know some which initiate growth in response to  daylength?  Or are those the
ones that only bloom (too) early in the spring and (too) late in the fall as
opposed to the continuous bloomers?

and Lloyd Zurbrigg said
> Also, this was a very cold winter here. The camellia bushes bore no
blossoms
>in Dec. Jan. and Feb, unlike former years.  I stylosa did; giving four
blooms
>scattered through Jan. and Feb.  I really am amazed to think the stalks
could
>go through such cold and still be sending up a  stalk or two., without being
>seriously damaged by the cold

There certainly is a vast range of frost tolerance in irises once bloom
stalks have started.  ICE SCULPTURE is the only one (other than my homely
weedy pallida cross) that I grow that seems to tolerate repeated temps below
30o when in bud without showing any damage.  [but I avoid the early and
midseason bloomers, so don't have much of a sample].  One of the two reasons
I joined AIS and this list was to try to find out how to get more irises with
that kind of cold tolerance. (the other was to find rot resistant varieties -
we've surely beaten that subject to death!).  Lloyd, I am glad the peculiar
weather has caused this in your garden this year - I regularly get freezes
during bud on my tall bearded irises (the early ones, if they make it that
far, and often the mid-season ones), and it either stunts stalks, blackens or
distorts flowers, or kills the stalk entirely.  I will be very interested in
hearing what you find out. 

Linda Mann east Tennessee USA lmann76543@aol.com
I can hear the rustle of Registration and Introduction books as people look
up ancestry of ICE SCULPTURE and MATRIX....
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