Re: CAT: Austin's Rainbow Gardens

Patricia, I remember Lloyd Austin's catalog very well.  One conspicuous
feature of his catalog was some very creative photography--so creative that
jokingly one rather well known irisarian asked him which iris he was
selling--the one in the photograph or the real one?  The variety STRATHMORE,
in particular, was featured with lighting from below, colored gels--it must
have been colored gels--giving a marvelous glow to a rather dull flower.

Austin did one rather significant thing--he bred up and promoted the first
registered "Space Age" irises and kept promoting them until some of the less
timid began to buy them.  The first SA's weren't very heavily substanced, had
rather small flowers on somewhat leggy stems as I recall (I could be wrong)
but they *did* have "horns," "spoons" and "flounces," terms for which we can
give the memorable Mr. Austin thanks.

Austin also imported numerous pure arils (a term for which use in this manner
we are also indebted to Lloyd Austin) from Israel and other areas and sold
quite a range of RC and OG hybrids in addition to the somewhat easier to grow
Mohrs (offspring of the diploid hybrid WILLIAM MOHR from the oncocyclus
*gatesii* and the diploid bearded Parisiana) and its much more fertile
half-onco tetraploid child from Ib-mac pollen, CAPITOLA.  Austin may have done
more than anyone to stir up popular interest in the arils, although the real
progress in developing growable tetraploid (or amphidiploid, more or less)
hybrids was made by  C. G. White and others including Eugene Sundt.  Wiloh
Wilkes introduced me to the C. G. White hybrids and I loved them, made copious
crosses from them and among them, then waited for germination that never came.
I had a lot to learn.

Some found the catalog laughable.  Others loved it.  I made sure I had my
annual copy, although I could grow almost none of what he offered among the
pure oncocyclus, and I wasn't a bit interested in the Space Agers -- then.  My
how times have changed.

Austin's gardens were known as "Rainbow Hybridizing Gardens" and were located
in Placerville, CA.  As you rightly remember the catalog featured a prominant,
highly colorful rainbow on its cover.  Lloyd himself is listed as "deceased"
in the 1969 Check List.

Neil Mogensen  z 7 near Asheville in the mountains of western NC

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