HYB:Plicata's & veining

Betty W. commented: " Hot Streak X Earl of Essex cross... Most have apricot
to  purplish standards with dark purple marking on either cream or yellow
falls.

"1509-4...had the butterfly veining....This year it bloomed plicata like all
the other siblings!  Everything  else in that bed was as marked, so I
seriously doubt I messed up the  marker.  I'm careful . . .  but not
perfect."

This sounds like it is kindred to my Clara Noyes experience, further
suggesting some butterfly-veined forms have some kinship, as yet
unexplained, with plicatas.

Plicatas are rather curious.  They seem to be able to pop up in almost all
family lines, as the various forms of the pl allelic series are recessive to
almost everything else.  Any number of plicatas have been noted and in some
cases used in breeding, or themselves registered and sometimes introduced
from non-plicata breeding.  Chuck Chapman in his most recent post calls
attention to AMERICAN CLASSIC as an example.  This is by far not the only
such occurance.  Most of us that raise seedlings have had plicatas appear
out of seeming nowhere.

To my knowledge, however, the butterfly wing patterns do not show up this
way.  All that I am aware of come from parents that had the Umbrata overlay
on the fall or were wing-veined patterns themselves, suggesting this to be a
dominant characteristic, as is the Umbrata.

Less there be confusion about amoenas and variegatas, it seems to me these
are non-blues with the fall surface having an overlay of the dominant
Umbrata spot, but the background color, the non-blue, is a recessive.  To
demonstrate this, any variegata or amoena crossed to a variety with blue
expressed will give neglectas, or if yellow is present also, blends with
fall Umbrata spots, with a continuinty of expression between these two
types--neglecta to bitone or bicolor blends, depending on the amount of
yellow present, all the way from almost none (ivory), some (cream), a fair
amount (yellow) or intense (yellow-gold), simply demonstrating the dosage
dependency of the yellow pigment with zero (white), 1 of four (ivory) and so
on..

The presence or absence of yellow at any degree makes no difference on
*whether* the Umbrata spot OR the wing-veining patterns show, but do affect
what color they appear to be.

The haft patterns, however, are something quite distinct from all this and
are present in ALL bearded irises *except glaciatas and luminatas,* which
again suggests some connection in some manner with the pl allelic series, so
that the most recessive form of the pl allelic series, the pl(a), blocks the
anthocyanin expression part of the haft marks, but not the yellow.

I also find it curious that both yellow and the violet-blue pigments occur
together in the same veins in the haft patterns.  In some cases, especially
in very old varieties within two to three generations from species ancestry,
the effect is often varying from violet to brown with gold-leaf glitter
appearing to be present in the patterns as well.  These are intricate,
beautiful patterns and I have wished they could be bred up and into modern
varieties, expressed with pizzazz and highly visible.

The occurance together of the two pigment series in the same cells, only in
the vein cells but not at all in the inter-vein spaces.  This character
showing at the same time with carotenoid and anthocyanin pigments in these
haft patterns demands explanation.  Apparently there is a structural
difference between the areas--vein and non-vein--that allows color
expression in the one, not in the other.  How odd!

It might be noted that standards, on their inside faces, have a lesser
expression, but clearly a related one, of haft-marks kindred to those
showing in the hafts and claw of the fall.

Neil Mogensen  z 7  Reg 4  western NC mountains

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