Re: OT-HUMOR: LEAF HOLES

J. Michael, Celia or Ben Storey wrote:
> 
> >a huge grouping of iris clumps with tall leaves, dark green with purple
> >spreading up them from the top of the rz about 2" high, healthy rzs
> >properly above the ground, and big round holes in the centers of the
> >leaves with no edge chewing.
> 
> ;-> ;-> ;-> ;-> ;-> ;->
> 
> Congratulations, Rima! You have stumbled across the very rare species iris,
> I. fromage suisse. Don't bother looking it up in your Dykes. It is so rare,
> even that great catolog keeper never stumbled across a sprig.
> 
> The purple tint you note spreading up the base of the fan is characteristic
> of I. fromage suisse but is not in itself the telling characteristic. Many
> irises have purple based foliage, because, once upon a time, irises were
> completely purple, head to toe. Hard to believe, isn't it? Many people have
> never heard of this but, as you know, general ignorance of any given report
> has no bearing upon its veracity. ;->
> The flowers were purple, the fans were purple, and the rhizomes were
> totally purple. Purple, purple, purple. The only parts of the common iris
> in those antique days that was not purple were haft markings, of course.
> 
> Many people were disatisfied with these purple irises. So hybridizers were
> called in. This was in July of 1257, when the middle class was spreading
> across Europe like fire ants, running up credit debt everywhere it went.
> Hybridizers had developed a good reputation from their early success in
> changing the shapes of pea pods to match the fanciful designs included on
> wall papers, and so all of middle class Europe expected great things of the
> Iris Remediation Project, as it was dubbed by troubadours. They were not
> disappointed.
> Hybridizers built a base camp at Orleans and set about broadening the
> limited coloration available on the flowers, a goal that proved amazingly
> easy to accomplish, because as we know today, purple is made of molecules,
> some of which are also genes. It doesn't take a geneticist to know what
> wonders can be accomplished by mixing and matching genes! Within no time
> there were so many different irises on the market, people started
> complaining that there were too many to choose from and they couldn't make
> up their minds.
> 
> Many of the new colors, especially the dominant oranges, clashed with the
> old purple foliage, which was now despised as "natural-looking." So the
> ever-resourceful hybridizers undertook the difficult and often tedious
> process of greening the fans. Early attempts failed, including the (to us)
> laughable method of installing an iris among other plants with strictly
> green foliage, so it would "get the idea." The most effective method proved
> to be constant stroking. The hybridizer slowly stroked the purple tint
> farther and farther down toward the rhizome, or "toe" as it is known to the
> scientific community. By this time the average hybridizer was wealthy
> enough to hire assistants to stroke the plants for him round the clock, in
> shifts. After several dozen generations of constant stroking, irises gave
> up trying to push purple dye up to the tips of their fans.
> Later the great scientist Hedy Lamaar developed an innovative technique
> using rubber bands to cut off the flow of purple tint to the fan tips,
> which led to mass layoffs of hybridizer assistants and denied the iris
> plants the daily stroking they had learned to enjoy. Even today, decades
> after the loss of their fan-stroking assistants, irises cause the tips of
> their fans to turn brown and die back in commemoration of their loss.
> Purple based foliage, or PBF, remains in some cultivars, evidence of the
> stubborn resistence of the original purple irises.
> 
> It was stated above that the presence of PBF in itself is not enough to
> identify a plant definitively as I. fromage suisse. The holes on the fans
> must also be present with the PBF. Green-based foliage plants with holes in
> the middles are *not* I. fromage suisse.
> 
> Even a passing acquaintance with the great variety of iris species can
> expand one's horizons in pleasant ways. Another rare and fragrant species
> is the short-lived I. moribundissima, or the famous "self-composting iris."
> I have been fortunate to observe a remarkable clump of this in my own yard
> and can tell you I will never forget the experience.
> 
> As you can tell from the above perhaps overlong explanation, there are many
> different levels of irising expertise represented on Iris-L. Appreciation
> of some of these levels requires more patience than others. I thank you for
> exercising your patience here at mine.
> 
> Happy speciesing! ;->
> 
> celia
> storey@aristotle.net
> Little Rock, Arkansas USDA Zone 7b

Hi Celia--
I'm not cutting any of this message because it's too valuable! I have a
bit of additional erudition concerning this rare finding.

First, I. fromage suisse originated with the holes. As the leaves grew
around it they turned purple in sheer frustration at not being green as
ordered by their creator, Kermit Le Grenouille, who threw it on the dung
heap (no compost in 1257). It scattered from there and came down 
successfully (being strong-willed enough to escape the purple-iris
haters and the black death) to the hybridizers in Orleans.

As for stroking, well, we all know about that!  All one has to do these
days is say "boo hoo" or even "wa-a-a-ah" and somebody somewhere will
stroke.  Being silent, irises had a tougher time.  (If any of those laid
off hybridizer assistants need a job, give them my number.)

You are probably right, but I thought the scientist was W.C. Fields
who, being color-blind and mistaking purple for black, gave it the name
"MY LITTLE CHICKADEE".

I really think that this rare find of mine (I'll take the photos)
coupled with your scholarly essay would make an excellent submission to
the Bulletin.
Rima  terra@catskill.net
upstate NY  zone 4

Now that i've stopped laughing (sort of), I'll hit the send button and
consign this whole thing to my save list and iris-L so I can read your
brilliant explanation again whenever I feel like saying "w-a-a-a-h".
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