Re: Re: Sun and talkin' with pics(was Opal Brown intros)

Bill, I found your comments and graph (how on earth did you do that?) very much in accord with my own observations over the years.
 
The Boise/Payette river valleys in SW Idaho are at elevations of 2000 to 2600 feet above sea level in a semi-arid steppe climate. Bearded iris, aril, spuria and Juno iris growth there is extremely lush and cv's thrive in the high, hot summer sun.  Some suffer in the iffy winter, with frequent Chinook wind thaws (orographic effects of weather coming over two or more mountain ranges west and north-west of the area) during periods otherwise dominated by stagnant, cold, dry air in the winter.  Temperatures drop below zero most winters, with occasional extremes to 25 or 28 below noted perhaps once in a decade--or at least, as used to happen.  I think the area is somewhat milder now. 
 
The effects on California-bred beardeds, and many from the Willamette Valley of Oregon, were sometimes chronically disasterous, as they responded to sun and warmth in the winter then went into shock in the returning cold.  Some lines were especially susceptible to Botrytis.  The diploid TB's never had a problem, but some of the early derivitives of *I. mesopotamica* often could hardly be kept alive.  I found Tobacco Road impossible, but its offspring did rather well.
 
The Utah valley around Salt Lake City and south to Utah Lake country was enough further south, but also quite a lot higher elevation, that the same kinds of iris thrived there, but behaved somewhat differently.  Pink Formal, for example, was an intense pink for Tell in Provo (later in Orem) UT, a vivid rich salmon color for us, and in the coastal areas at sea level something else entirely--at least in the examples I saw.
 
Some of those effects may have been in the chemistry of the soils.  We had far more of the Cascade Volcano's ash mixed into our soils than the areas west of the range.  We also had the benefits of the Yellowstone hot-spot effects on minerals brought to the surface over the several million years of the Yellowstone caldera marching its way from Eastern Oregon to its present location.  Utah had other complementary mineral sources in their soils, also deeply affected by volcanics to the west. especially from the Long Valley caldera in California.
 
I had attributed the difference in growth more to chemistry than to latitude and altitude, but I believe you are right. 
 
Neil Mogensen   z 7   western NC

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