Re: Re: breeding Rebloomers
iris@hort.net
  • Subject: Re: Re: breeding Rebloomers
  • From: L* M* <1*@rewrite.hort.net>
  • Date: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 07:37:10 -0400
Most people who are engaged in creative work don't do what others suggest most of the time ;-) I listen, may try some different approaches after thinking about what you suggest, but no way I'm going to take time away from my own stuff to start all over trying to do what you suggest. Especially when what I'm doing is working for me.
People usually learn more by making their own mistakes, and as you well know, serendipity plays a big role in advances in science. So doing something that "shouldn't" work can be informative. 

<Most people haven't made  the crosses I suggest.>
I assume you mean it works against rebloom in your growing conditions (i.e., far north of zone 8)?
I'm nearly zone 8 myself, so all I need to add to a zone 8 Mediterranean iris is disease/late freeze tolerance, with enough cold tolerance to get through an occasional hard freeze. Turns out to be very easy to do. But it has taken a lot of trial and error, especially when I finally had enough $ to afford to buy and kill some of the newest & greatest.
Ability to trigger bud set in high heat/humidity remains a big unknown for me, both genetically (suite of genes? one broken gene? dominant? recessive?) and figuring out which lines might have the genes for it. 

I forget what FC stands for ...
Most of the 'southern' plants (geez, I wish we had some memorable, non confusing terms for all this stuff!) that I've chosen to try have had descriptions of plant habits in their catalogs of origin or I've heard by word of mouth from someone knowledgeable about plant habits. If Keith Keppel, for example, says in his catalog that something isn't as strong a grower as he'd like, I'll not try that one. Also, most of these breeders have been very helpful in sharing information about breeding potential in email correspondence.
I thought we were talking about iris breeders. This sounds more like the general public than breeders.
One thing I think we agree on is that breeding for rebloom is not a matter of buying two irises advertised as rebloomers, expecting to cross them and get a bunch of reblooming seedlings.
While your theory that only one type of genetic 'break' for rebloom is recessive may be true, my seedlings leave me with the impression that <all> rebloom is recessive. Maybe because of variable genetic responses to weather/year to year climate variations? Or maybe because of different temperature threshold genes that don't match up? 

On 10/6/2014 9:11 PM, Chuck Chapman wrote:

Usually when crossing to a non FC  iris a  southern plant is chosen based on flower  rather then

plant habits. This would work against rebloom.

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