Re: colour change
- To: i*@onelist.com
- Subject: Re: colour change
- From: H*@aol.com
- Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1998 11:19:00 EDT
From: HIPSource@aol.com
In a message dated 98-10-03 08:10:27 EDT, you write:
<<
We've had 2 iris stalls in different parts of the countryside over the past
few weeks and have met hundreds of new people. At each one separately a
different woman has fronted me over the colour of her TBs changing. >>
Bernard,
This unlikely phenomenon has been reported before and in the past we have
discussed it at length on this list. We have come up with only one possible
scenario that explains it plausibly at this time. Mike Sutton reported that
herbicide damage can alter the color of bearded irises so that they bloom
white the first season after the damage, but that this abates later. The
typical report involvers purple irises turning white although I read of one
woman who reported them all turning yellow. As I recall some other
explanations that have been offerred in the past are 1) more vigorous white
irises overrunning less vigorous purples 2) all purples in a planting not
blooming one year while the whites did bloom 3) Irises dug and only the
biggest rhizomes reset--and the white cultivar made bigger rhizomes so only
white were reset 4) problems with soil elements resulting in failure to
develop color adequately in the purples. Now, a point I made last time this
question arose was that if only the color of the iris has changed then any
other differences--form, height, foliage color, ruffling--should be unchanged
so that it should still be possible to distinguish between different irises in
the planting. I observe further that we have not heard whether these new white
irises look normal in other respects.
The consensus is that chemical factors or damage may possibly affect color in
some way. We think that if the phenomenon was something that the irises were
prone to do it would have been reported in some prominent irisarian's garden
sometime in the last seventy-five years or so and entered the literature,
which it has not, except as these odd reports emerging from the masses. If you
can get out to look at a bed of these things first hand and even mooch a
rhizome to study and let bloom on for analysis next year, it might offer some
insights into what is now an internationally reported wierdness.
Anner Whitehead
HIPSource@aol.com
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