JI Symposium

	Adding to what Kathy Guest wrote: (my apologies to the SIBROB folks
	who have already seen it - delete :))


A lot of us spent many minutes (?) in the Royal Botanical
Garden's gift shop depleting their stock of anything with irises on it.
Some of us even came away with earrings depicting Japanese irises. :)

Kathy Guest did a superb job of organizing this week-end, everything
went flawlessly. One of the best parts of this affair was seeing the
slides and hearing the top hybridizers of Japanese irises explain their
future goals in JI breeding.

I was most impressed with Chad Harris and his breeding program and
wanted to speak with him on Sunday....he left early and I never got
the chance but will write him a letter instead. One of his aims is to
breed for a longer JI season and one of the ways is through 'sequential
bloom', having one or more blooms open at a time. I wanted to tell him
that being in a very cold climate, we experience that all the time with
most of the beardless irises we grow. Certainly all my JIs bloom
sequentially over a 6-week period and some longer. I had one that
bloomed for over two months, albeit one or two blooms at a time.

I prefer a shorter more dramatic 'statement' on my plants and certainly
would sacrifice the longevity of bloom period to experience the beauty
of a lot of multiple blooms. One Siberian that does this consistently is
'Butter & Sugar'. Also, 'Indy' does this and knocks my socks off every
year.

Cheers,

Ellen

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ellen Gallagher  / e_galla@moose.ncia.net
Northern New Hampshire, USA   /    Zone 3
Siberian iris robin    /  sibrob@ncia.net
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index