CULT: % of loss - lengthy

First off, if you are not interested in hearing about the iris I
murdered last year hit the delete key now because this is kinda long.
	After making a final count of the iris I murdered last year I decided
to list them by hybridizer and see if there was a pattern between
hybridizer and iris loss.  I could find no discernable pattern that
would make me feel like any one hybridizers' iris was more susceptible
to rot after being sprayed with Round-up.  The numbers are however
depressing.  I lost a total of 53 iris out of 848 sprayed.  This is
about 6.25 percent.  There are a few out of the 53 that have a very slim
chance of survival so that number may decrease slightly.  This does not
take into account the number of clumps that were slowed down but did not
die.  I have several three year clumps that look like 1 or 2 year
clumps.  At this point I am just grateful for the survivors and mourning
some old friends like Rhythm and Honorabile.  
	What I did notice was a high percentage of the losses were SDB's and
that I seemed to lose a lot of black or red iris among the TB's that
died.
	The symptoms were:  the rhizome feels spongy if it is still there, the
fan was brown and when tugged on pulled off the top of the rhizome, when
dug up the roots were dead and brown in color.  I have found no
noticable odor.  When you pull the fan off there is sometimes some gooey
tan goop right under it.  Most of the damaged iris that have survived
are from new babies coming off the sides that are making their own
roots.  When I found this I poured 10% chlorine solution on the clump to
saturate thoroughly.  Hopefully this will keep anything in the soil from
spreading to them.  Seems to be working so far.
	The good news is that I only lost 1 iris out of all the new ones I
ordered last year.  It was a little AB named She Devil that was fine in
January with new growth coming on and is dead as a doornail now??  I
will have to replace this one as I do not feel it is anything the
hybridizer had a fault with.
	I was surprised to discover the number of iris I have from several
different hybridizers.  Some of which, like Ghio, that I thought didn't
do very well down here.  Contrary to what I thought, I have 22 of his
introductions and 19 of them are going great.  Not only did I think that
Ghio iris had trouble in Lubbock, (something I have heard repeated
locally many times) but I had no idea I had 22 cultivars from him.  You
might try looking at your iris collection from this perspective.  It
gave me an idea of who is breeding iris of a type that I seem to like.  
-- 
Dana Brown, Lubbock, Texas  Zone 7
Where we are 3,241 ft above sea level, with an average rainfall of
17.76"
of rain a year.  Our average wind speed is 12.5 mph and we have an
average
of 164 days of clear weather, 96 of which dip below freezing.
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