SA: Spage Agers and Abhorrance

Walta said:

<< In the late fifties, Lloyd Austin developed the first Space Age
 <irises, and to this day they are abhorred by many.>

And, referring to the above,  Celia continued:

 <Do they have valid concerns, or is the revulsion merely a conflict of taste?
 Ron Mullin went to town on SAs during the judging school he gave for us
 last summer. He left the impression it was kind of a wicked thing to breed
 SAs. >>

I'm not comfortable with the idea of dismissing any entire stylistic category
of irises as unattractive out of hand or suggesting that any sincere
hybridizing activity is inappropriate. 

Individual tastes always play a role in our appreciation of irises, and
individual tastes differ, although frequently it is possible to identify a
consensus. The bottom line for us individually and collectively is whether a
particular iris in question is an attractive iris in and of itself independent
of category. Now, with the space agers, some are, to my eye, more attractive
than others. In some the extra petaloid parts are an embellishment, in some
others they are an improbable fleshy overgrowth that obscures form. But I
cannot imagine telling anyone not to play around with hybridizing them if the
spirit moved them that way. 

It should go without saying that any iris that repeated fails to open is a
crummy plant regardless of of what its configuration is. 

Anner Whitehead, Richmond,VA
Henry Hall  henryanner@aol.com
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