Re: CULT: and HYB: TB's in general....

>if two people are offering you one variety of iris and one has a larger 
>rhizome that had a larger flower, the smaller rhizome with the smaller 
>flower would be an inferior plant.

I don't believe rhizome size has anything at all to do with bloom size.  
If I acquire a huge, *mature* rz of BLENHEIM ROYAL (the blue that does 
best in my garden so far) from the West Coast and another smaller, 
*mature* rz of BR from the Midwest and grow them side by side under 
identical growing conditions in my garden, I expect the blooms, stalks, 
and plant vigor to be the same in all respects once both plants have 
acclimated to my growing conditions.  The key word here is *mature*.  
Huge rzs don't give bigger blooms, but immature rzs of any size aren't 
going to produce blooms at all.

A couple of years ago, I purchased collections of SDBs from a source in 
the East and another in the West.  The West Coast SDB rzs were 
comparatively huge (about the size of my native TB rzs) and extremely 
healthy looking.  The East Coast SDB rzs were tiny and a bit dessicated 
upon arrival.  The next spring, all rzs were alive, healthy, and starting 
to clump up nicely, but only those East Coast raisins bloomed - every 
single one.  Not one of the West Coast lunkers bloomed until two years 
after planting.  None of these East/West SDBs were duplicate cvs, though. 
 I believe the difference in this "out of the gate" performance was a 
matter of acclimation to my growing conditions.  The West Coasters simply 
had to overcome a greater climatic and cultural shock in my garden than 
the Easterners.  All are doing admirably now, however.

Size isn't everything, Steve, and in terms of iris rhizomes, it really 
doesn't seem to matter much at all.

Laurie


-----------------
laurief@paulbunyan.net
http://www.geocities.com/lfandjg/
USDA zone 3b, AHS zone 4 - northern MN
clay soil


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