HYB: report (whine?) for the year...

Well, as always in TN, the weather has been interesting for iris breeding this year. 

Last damaging freeze was mid-April.
Took about two weeks to start getting fertile blooms, by which time we were having record heat, very low humidity, constant wind, and back into drought conditions. Pollen and stigmas were drying out faster than I could do much, plus there were still quite a few frost damaged/infertile blooms.
Then it started raining. And never seemed to quit. I heard somewhere that it was the wettest May on record. A total of 8.9 inches of rain here over the last 2 or 3 weeks.
Finally, going to have about three days without rain. Too bad bloom season is down to the last few blooms!
Definitely a good year for selecting both parents and seedlings. Only a very few mother plants will make pods and mature them without rotting in this kind of weather.
Some of the pollen collected during the heatwave and some of the pollen on potted storeboughts indoors was viable, some of the blooms daubed between showers took, so there are actually a few pods out there that didn't dissolve in the rain. yet.
IMMORTALITY held up the best - looks like several pods on her. One pod survived on RENOWN. Maybe a few on HARVEST OF MEMORIES. A few on some of the IMM and HoM seedlings. They may rot yet. 
--
Linda Mann east Tennessee USA zone 7/8
East Tennessee Iris Society <http://www.korrnet.org/etis>
American Iris Society web site <http://www.irises.org>
talk archives: <http://www.hort.net/lists/iris-talk/>
photos archives: <http://www.hort.net/lists/iris-photos/>
online R&I <http://www.irisregister.com>

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