HYB: A little more about dominant white

Just for fun, may I share with you a cross I made many, many years ago?
Garnet Treasure (1953) was one of the earliest SDB's, coming from the TB
plicata Minnie Colquit and one of the early pumilas, a violet clone.  Garnet
Treasure was a reddish violet with a darker fall spot.

I crossed this SDB with an arilbred seedling of Mel Suiter's from Sun Lakes
(light to medium blue TB) X I. hoogiana.

The resulting seedlings were uniformly vigorous, almost exactly half an
ice-white or blue white, the other half bitone violets, the fall color
probably from the pumila spot.  Several of them were charming IB-arilbreds of
sorts, but Tell Muhlestein, who introduced for me, wasn't interested even in
seeing any of them, I'm sorry to say.  They were sterile--totally--and he saw
the potential in them only as breeders, which they could not be.

The genetic makeup of this cross was awesome--three unlike sets of
chromosomes--two sets of 12 (presumably) from TB, one having come from each
parent, one set of 8 from pumila, and one set of 11 from the regelia.

The fact that half the cross looked like "dominant whites" suggests that the
dwarfs may have been the origin of "I."  The pigment makeup in these seedlings
must have been complex, as the blue of hoogiana may not be violanin as found
in TB's, and the violet pigment of the pumila used may have been something
else again.  Three competing anthocyanins?  From the charts in TWOI pigments
in iris are far more complex than we usually assume anyway.

 What used to be known as *chamaeiris* (I forget what it is called now)
crossed with TB's gives sterile or nearly sterile 44-chromosome IB's.  Many of
them are dirty white (as in Albicans), some are dark purple, such as kochii.
I wouldn't be surprised if some balkan dwarf blood were mixed in that
hodge-podge somehow too, considering the colors.

Dominant whites as we have them now probably come mostly from Kashmir White, a
collected clone, I think.  I have the impression we can get "dominant whites"
from SDB's that have *no* TB white ancestry in the parent crosses.  Am I
correct?

It is possible that Kashmir White has some dwarf ancestry back there
somewhere.  Keith Keppel and several other people would know far more about
this than I.  If anyone is lurking, care to speak up?

Neil Mogensen  z 7 near Asheville, NC

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