TB-CULT/BLOOM
- To: "'i*@egroups.com'"
- Subject: TB-CULT/BLOOM
- From: T* C* L* A*
- Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 16:32:02 -0400
It's the surprises that make iris season so much fun; plants you've bought
based on verbal description, rave reviews on this list or the sight of one
lovely stalk at a show long before sale season -- and here it is, a year
later, and your new child blossoms in your own garden. Will it look like its
photo, or do words and colors mesh? What has your soil done to its
complection? Does it match your haloed memory?
I'd spent a long time looking for a clear-schoolbus-yellow rebloomer, and
fell in love with RONEY'S ENCORE at a fall show two years ago; as it came
from Ginny Spoon's garden (and graced my desk for days after the show) it
was a wonderful rich golden-yellow, the color of a good mango. So I ordered
it from her last summer. It just opened here at Squirrelheim -- a lovely
blossom, substantial and ruffled to beat the band, but a soft buff in color
-- though the beard is bright orange. Funny, but BERTWISTLE in the
front-yard bed (six stalks open as I write) produces that dreamed-of color
in the half-inch plicata rims on both falls and standards; maybe the
backyard soil is different. But it makes me think that maybe the rebloomer
AUTUMN something-or-other that came up tan with brown barring instead of the
promised gold last fall may indeed be golden-toned in somebody else's
garden.
Again, I bought CANTINA from Mike Sutton last summer based on a photo in
Stockton's catalog, and he sent me a lovely big rhizome which has sent up
two short stalks in this its first season. They opened so different from the
photo -- greyed-purple standards and falls, with a mid-rib flush of
brilliant blue, rather than the rosy orchid-purple base color I'd expected
-- that I sent Mike an inquiry -- until I found a Virginia grower's online
photo (at http://www.inet-images.com/nichollsgardens/tb_c.htm ) that looks
just like what opened here. Mike, ever the gentleman, quickly offered to
send me a couple more pieces for comparison -- no I've got the right thing;
maybe it comes up redder in California.
I went right out to Southern States and bought foliar fertilizer with lotsa
trace minerals -- maybe that'll help enrich rebloom color?
And serendipity makes such lovely color combinations. What I thought was
FIJI DANCER isn't a copper plicata at all, but looks a lot like BEVERLEY
SILLS (if BS has an orange beard) -- fortunate, because the CRUZIN I thought
I planted behind it is instead a rich deep-purple self with absolutely no
other color, maybe GRAPE ADVENTURE, and the peachtone just sings against
that, especially with purple pasqueflowers nodding in front and Jupiter's
beard and blue borage behind. I think I'll move the CANTINA to abut this;
it'll show off that soft purple-grey beautifully.
I got an "unknown tan and buff" from Rosalie last summer, that turns out to
be just gorgeous - warm tan-gold standards washed cinnamon, falls soft
yellow heavily peppered/plicata'ed cinnamon, and edged gold. Sort of like
HEARTHFIRE with a gold rim. (anybody got any ideas what it might be?) It's
right next to WILD SHARON, which seems an echo at the other end of the
spectrum -- same balance, but in the blue range. I smile whenever I see it,
"unknown" or not.
Lynn
Zone 6a, Lanham MD
where a thundershower has just washed through, not dropping the 85-degree
heat in the least, and I'd rather be home gazing at irises than pushing
beaurocracy...
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