Russian Hybridizing

By Sergey Stroganov

This season, many new irises bloomed, but the most important thing for me personally was that for the first time, seedlings from the 2018 pollinations bloomed. Since I used the method of germinating seeds during winter indoors, it allowed me to get half of the seedlings to bloom in the Russian climate in the second year after sowing. I can not boast of having any strategy or specific goals, since this was my first experience of hybridization and often used the flower pair that was at hand and the flowers were in the phase that was suitable for pollination.

Perhaps someone will find the result interesting, because it is very interesting to watch how Nature mixes genes and gives out a kaleidoscope of colors and shapes. So I decided to share some photos of the seedlings blooming here.

The cross 18-27 ‘Smart Money’ X ‘Sherbet Bomb’ was made because both parents are wonderful varieties from Ghio and Blyth. A year before the pollination, I read in a 2014 article by Barry Blythe that Joe Ghio recommended ‘Smart Money’ as a good parent. I agree that a lot of time has passed since then and even more interesting varieties have appeared, but ‘Smart Money’, in my opinion, still remains a masterpiece. That is equally true of ‘Sherbet Bomb’ with its unusual color.  From the 20 seedlings sprouted from the seeds, 10 of them bloomed, all quite different. I must say that of all the seedlings, irises from this crossing showed very early flowering. First photo of the parent couple:

'Smart Money'

'Sherbet Bomb' 

And now the seedlings are from these parents (the letters in the numbers are assigned in chronological order of blooming):

18-27A: It turned out to be a huge flower in diameter (about 7.5 inches).

18-27B: this color scheme also has quite a lot of irises, although I liked the bright beards and red strokes next to them.

18-27C:

18-27D: bluish-tinged standards and mustard-yellow fouls are not a frequent combination. It is also quite ruffled.

18-27E

18-27F: another yellow, more red pigments on the falls.

18-27G: it turned out quite an appetizing color.

18-27H: colors are also quite rare here.

18-27I: I admire the color scheme. But the standards disappointed me-they were misshaped, so this iris will definitely not be registered. However it is interesting to see.

18-27J color of falls turned out this way most likely thanks to ‘Sherbet Bomb’

I also liked the fact that you can see a pattern of veins in the standards.

Editor's Note: Part 2 of this post will appear next week.