Developing New Pacifica Iris Hybrids

Kathleen Sayce

January 1, 2017

This could be titled the Frustrations of Developing New Hybrids. 

The current issue of Pacific Iris came out two weeks ago, and it includes sadness:  well-known irisarian Jean Witt died in 2016. Jean cast a very long shadow over many decades of iris breeding, including PCI and wide crosses between PCI and Sibiricae species. This issue celebrates her life, including decades of her work hybridizing, guiding generations of irisarians, and looks at the future of iris hybridization from the viewpoint of several current growers.

The last time we spoke, Jean told me that the world of iris breeding is still wide open. As much has been done, we have only scratched the surface, she said. New patterns, new colors, and new genetic crosses await us. 

My own perspective has changed greatly over the years that I’ve been growing PCI. I began with the desire to grow sturdy plants with flowers in a rainbow of pure colors in an ever widening range of flowering months. Local climate constraints [growing on the coast of the Pacific Northwest] became clear over several frustrating years of failed crosses, and even lack of seed set on open pollinated flowers during particularly wet springs. This reality led me to rethink breeding goals. I started other beardless Iris species from seed, with a goal of wide crosses with PCI. Several of those plants immediately picked up a virus, so out they went. It was time for rethinking. 

Iris tenax in the garden, grown from seed and showcasing the sturdy flowers, held well above leaves and in this case, with nicely rounded petals. 

I offer my modified goals here, as we enter winter in the northern hemisphere. 

Goal One: Well-shaped flowers that don’t melt in the rain. 
The pale yellows I developed a few years ago have fragile flowers. One good rainstorm, and the petals are gone. White and other pale flower colors often have the same issue. Richard Richards’ very sturdy white-flowered hybrids from southern California, bred for heat tolerance and long summer droughts, hold up to my local rain. Largely ruffly flowers with wide petals and abundant frills also tend to do badly in wet weather, as do most flat dinner-plate type petals. I have a new appreciation every wet spring for those narrow, sturdy falls on species PCI that bend down rather than out. 

Floppy pods! Snails and slugs may chew on the pods when they are flat on the ground. 

Goal Two: Flowering stems that stand up and flex in high winds, and hold their seed pods up, weeks later.  
While stems that flop over undoubtedly help with seed dispersal in nature; in the garden, this makes it hard to find and collect seeds. I started with green organza bags to enclose pods, only to find that they vanish in the garden, sometimes for years. Brightly colored bags do better, but upright stems are better still. 

One of the sturdiest PCI in the coastal garden is this dwarf Iris douglaisana selection. The flowers are plain, and yes, this one stands up to rain and wind nicely. 

Goal Three: Plants that are strong, vigorous, and sturdy, with a variety of heights. 
Too many current hybrids are all the same size. Historically, PCI had very short plants, well under 12 inches (25 cm) in height, as well as tall plants, more than 30 inches high (76 cm). Bring back the full range of heights! I’m now selecting, as much as I can, for taller, stronger plants. Each climate has its own constraints and opportunities, and in my climate, sturdiness is an important goal. 

An I. douglasiana selection from Cape Blanco, Oregon, has plain lavender flowers on sturdy stems, and is taller than most PCI. 

As for colors? Ha. I’ll take what I can get, to get started on the next century of PCI hybrids. It's back to the drawing board for me. Jean is right:  the field is wide open for new irises of all kinds.  

Dry Summers, Summer Water and Pacifica Iris

Kathleen Sayce

Pacifica Iris, or PCI, thrive in a mediterranean climate––that’s a small ‘m’ for the climate, not the geographic area. This climate type has a wet fall-winter-spring period, with rain starting in early fall to winter, and ending in late winter to late spring, depending on latitude. In the Pacific Northwest, cool wet weather can last from six to ten months, and very dry weather (no measurable precipitation) two to six months. Most years, the August-September period is very dry. Going south on the West Coast, the wet season shrinks until in southern California, it lasts a few weeks in midwinter, and the dry season lasts most of the year. 

Iris chrysophylla x I. douglasiana, a large leaved, branched flowered form that flowers in June. 

It’s August now, and that means the West Coast is well into the annual dry season, from northern Baja California, Mexico to somewhere along the British Columbia coast. My garden is dry, and I’ve started supplemental water to some plants, but my PCI do not get supplemental water. The last of the PCI are ripening seeds, most have already open seed pods, and they are toughing out the dry season in a warm dormancy. Roots are not growing. These irises wait out the dry weather.

Seed pods from the same plant as above, 2 months later. 

I could clean up plants at this time, but I have learned that if the dry season is prolonged, then PCI will abandon more leaves, and I’ll have to take those leaves off later. So I limit my cleanup to removing vigorous weeds, dead plants, and any plants I want to remove from a particular spot. There’s no replanting this time of year. Plants that are dug out now will not reestablish if replanted. If I were watering regularly, I might be able to transplant in a few weeks. 

On watering PCI in summer, opinions are mixed. Some say no water at all. Many  nursery growers have found that PCI are fine with regular summer watering. As Secretary for the Society for Pacific Coast Native Iris, I’ve been offered many opinions from members all over the world on this subject, and have concluded that PCI do not like hot, alkaline water. Cool, neutral to acidic water is fine. I prefer not to drag hoses or sprinklers, so I do not water them, though my plants would probably be bigger and have more flowers if I did supply water all summer. 

Iris tenax, flowering mid June, on one of the last rainy days of the year. 

Late summer is a curious time in the garden:  Flowers are still abundant on many perennial and annual plants, which will keep flowering with supplemental water into fall. Butterflies make the rounds on warm days, feeding on those flowers. The end of second flight of Anise Swallowtails is still underway. Margined White butterflies are on their fourth or fifth adult generation for the year. Soon, the occasional south-migrating Monarch butterfly may pass through. Even these plants are shedding leaves, setting seed, getting ready for summer’s end. Meanwhile, fall flowering bulbs and perennials are starting to show buds and first flowers. 

The clear signal that fall is coming is birds migrating south. I live on a large estuary, Willapa Bay, where tens of thousands of shorebirds, ducks and other waterfowl fly through each fall. Shorebird numbers are picking up from week to week. Bald Eagles fledged their chicks; the adults will leave by September for inland rivers, to fish for fall migrating salmon. I hear the fledgling eagles call for their parents by mid August, looking for those formerly attentive parents.

New visitors, two Indian peacocks, check out the flower beds. The turquoise, silver and blue eyes in the tail feathers would make a striking PCI flower.  

 This week, there was a new bird species in the yard. It’s not migratory, and yes, it is introduced. Two Indian peacocks wandered into the yard. Sightings have traveled up and down the bay for several miles this summer, and this week, it was our turn for a visit. The editor of our bulletin asked me a few weeks ago about my hybridizing goals for PCI. A PCI with the brilliance of a peacock’s tail seems a very worthy goal!

Phenology of Pacifica Iris during Climate Shifts

Kathleen Sayce

Phenology, or the study of what condition plants are in (onset of growth, vegetative, pre-flowering, flowering, seed set, dormancy) at what date during the year, is fascinating to track during climate shifts. No, I’m not talking about climate change, but about regular weather cycles on the West Coast of North America. 

Iris tenax, wild collected seed from sea cliffs by Manzanita, Oregon, was flowering in June, and now has numerous pods. 

There are several regular cycles that last six months to twenty months or so: 

First, the familiar one–– the annual season, which cycles every year through winter, spring, summer, fall. 

Second, El Niño-Southern Oscillation Events, ENSOs. In the popular press, these are called El Niño, which bring warmer than usual weather to the Pacific Northwest, and range from dry to wet weather in winter depending on ENSO intensity and latitude on the West Coast. California often gets much wetter winters during ENSO events. 

ENSOs alternate with two other weather states over the Pacific Ocean. The other two are La Niña events and ‘neutral conditions’. La Niña events bring colder than normal weather to the West Coast, and neutral conditions in the Pacific are just that, not strongly warmer or colder. These three states of weather over the Pacific Ocean impact weather around the world. The National Weather Service posts intermediate to long term forecasts which can help us see what is coming over the next few seasons. 

Third, there is also a longer weather cycle, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which typically lasts twenty to twenty one years, warm and dry or cold and wet. In the warm and dry state, the Pacific Northwest has less rain, salmon populations fall as fewer fish reach streams to breed, and ocean conditions are poor for their growth and survival. Snowpacks are reduced in the mountains. At the same time, Alaska and northern British Columbia get the opposite, more rain and cold weather. The flip side is cold and wet in the Pacific Northwest, and warmer and drier to the north. 

I. douglasiana X I. chrysophylla has sturdy spikes with multiple flowers, on a tall plant that grows in dense clumps. I'm planning to divide this one at the next garden redo. 

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation flipped to warm and dry in the Northwest last year, with a strong ENSO event on top of it. We had a long dry summer last year, bracketed by two wet winters. This year saw average snowpack form, but it melted early as the weather warmed. 

What does this mean for Pacifica Iris in northwest gardens?  Flowering begins earlier, progresses faster, and is over earlier in the summer. Pollinators are often out of step with the bloom times, so seed set can be reduced on open pollinated plants, especially for those that are early flowering. 

Grown from SPCNI seeds, this late flowering PCI has unknown parentage, but often flowers into June. Flowers are species like, small and numerous on a medium-sized plant. 

During cool springs and cool to cold weather cycles, Pacifica Iris start flowering in April, peak in May, and continue into July, some years to mid July. During warm dry weather, iris begin flowering in March, peak in April, and are done by early June. This is months later than southern California gardens, and trails northern California by at least six weeks. 

The last Pacifica Iris to flower are a sturdy handful, including two species crosses and a local species. Those lovely frilly hybrids are long past when these irises start to flower. 

Iris tenax from Saddle Mountain, Oregon, also has nice rose-purple flowers.

Iris tenax from Saddle Mountain and the sea cliffs near Manzanita, Oregon, generally starts in May and finishes in June, with rose-purple flowers. 

A cross between I. douglasiana X I. chrysophylla with tall stems and flower spikes, and small dark purple flowers [seed from SPCNI several years ago] is one of my favorite May to June flowering clumps. 

Another cross between I. tenax X I. innominata also from SPCNI, flowers in May and June, and can be stunningly floriferous in cool wet years. I have white, pink-veined, and lavender clumps of this cross. 

Dwarf I. douglasiana is still flowering in late June. Also the slowest to ripen pods, I'll be collecting seeds in September from these plants. 

The last to flower, still in bloom in July most years, is a dwarf I. douglasiana, typically less than twelve inches tall, with sturdy short stems and lavender flowers. This also came from the SPCNI seed exchange, donated by Diane Whitehead from her garden in Victoria, British Columbia. 

Today as I checked the garden [too many weeds getting ahead of me already, ugh] I saw few to no pods on the early flowering irises, but the late flowering irises had many fat buds, already ripening seeds. 

With warm dry weather in store for the next couple of decades, I think it’s time to focus on these late flowering plants for the next generation of new Pacifica Iris in my garden. 

Reds and Yellows for the gaudy corner of the PCI garden

By Kathleen Sayce

Reds and yellows combine to make particularly richly colored flower displays. Here's a sampling of a few PCI hybrids in this group. The typical pattern is red to dark red falls and yellow to orange standards and style arms. In some hybrids, this combination shows up on all flower parts. 

PCI  'Wildest Imagining'

Start with a dark yellow to orange base color with darker veins, in PCI 'Wildest Imagining', then add more color to the petals, on the edges:

PCI 'Eye Catching'

Then darken the falls, and standards and style arms with intensely colored flowers including:

PCI 'Rancho Coralitos'

PCI 'San Justo'

Then intensify the colors:

PCI 'Wino' has particularly intense yellows

End with a hybrid that is particularly attractive, with red petals and golden veining on the falls. Not shown in this photo is the attractive velvety surface of 

'Sunburn', which makes it glow in sunlight. 

PCI 'Sunburn'

Winter in the Garden: To trim leaves on PCIs or not?

Kathleen Sayce

A couple of years ago, I posted a comment about having used a dry sunny break in the weather to clip back iris leaves and clean up the garden. Several people reprimanded me for doing so, saying I was taking away these plants' capacity to photosynthesize in coming weeks until the new shoots came into full growth. With PCIs, sometimes that is true, and sometimes it is not. 

PCI "Clarice Richards' stays green all winter; brown leaves are tugged/clipped off in late winter or early spring. 

A storm called an Atmospheric River blew through this week; regionally these are called Pineapple Express storms, which bring warm air, high winds and heavy rain. About 11 inches fell in 3 days, ending with more than 5 inches of rain yesterday, a day so wet that salmon could just about swim in the air instead of the streams. Today the sun came out for the first time in nearly a week.

I took photos in the garden of the "photosynthesis-deprived plants" that I trimmed back that fall. My focus in past years for clipping was plants that had brown leaves. Many PCIs have mixed genetic heritages from most of the species in this group, and the degree of browning, if any, varies with those genes.  

Iris innominata has almost completely browned off by mid January. With snow, it will go completely dormant.  

A typical PCI clump in the winter garden, PCI 'Finger Pointing', has a few green shoots and weeds, and a lot of brown. 

Which groups stay the greenest, and can be left alone throughout the winter?  Iris douglasiana-derived hybrids.

Iris douglasiana selections and hybrids with considerable "Doug-blood" stay green all winter long. A few brown leaves are tugged off in late winter or early spring. 

Which groups go the brownest, so that by early winter, the only green leaves are the new shoots?  Joe Ghio's hybrids, and others from his mixed species pool of gene stock. Also, Iris innominata/I. thompsonii plants go brown by midwinter.  

Ghio hybrids typically brown off by early winter. The only green to be seen is weeds, and a few tiny new shoots.

Which groups go completely dormant and lose leaves?  Iris tenax and I. hartwegii. These species' leaves vanish by midwinter. 

Iris tenax vanishes underground by midwinter. Old leaves and winter cress plants will come out when I clean up the oak leaves and spruce cones in a few weeks. 

Spring is coming! Among all the brown leaves and debris, I saw several new shoots on most of my plants. A few have died; one that I though died last fall came back with several new shoots, and the rest have those small green fans we love to see in early spring. 

Now, if the weather stays dry for a few days, I can take my annual soil sample, and start pruning and tidying the garden beds. 

Autumn: Transplanting time for Pacifica Iris

Kathleen Sayce 

September 20, 2015

Many irises are easy to transplant at any time of year. Dig them up, divide, cart to new homes and tuck in. Clip off some leaves to reduce moisture loss while the new roots form, and away they go. Not so for PCIs. Treat them this way, and they go root tips up before you can find your watering can.

Healthy PCI transplants:  new fans, and healthy new white roots. Both of these I. douglasiana pieces are ready to plant. 

There are two times of year to successfully transplant PCIs: Autumn and Spring.

At these times, PCI roots are in active growth. Check the roots, removing soil gently around the base of a fan or two. If there are white roots, one to four inches long, then get out the shovel and start digging. It's time.

New fans on a PCI, but no new roots yet; this plant needs to wait a few weeks before being divided.

Why Autumn and Spring for root growth? Pacifica Iris are native to the West Coast of North America, which has a Mediterranean climate––during the drought period each summer, these and other native species go dormant. In mild winter climates, PCI may have live roots all winter, but they dry down and wait out dry summers.

Summer drought duration depends on latitude, the farther south you are, the longer the duration, which varies from less than three months to more than ten months on the West Coast. I garden at 46°N, so droughts usually last less than three months, though this year it was more than five.

If you water regularly, PCI initiate new roots earlier in the fall than do those depending on rain. You can divide and transplant much earlier in the fall and later in the spring.

This flat of PCI seedlings has been watered regularly all summer, and is ready to move into the garden.

PCI seedlings in pots are tough, and can stand being transplanted several times in the first year or two of life. Even larger plants, one to five gallons, can withstand transplanting slightly outside the Autumn or Spring periods. These have all had regular water, as they must to live in pots.

Other tips:

Mulch after planting to keep roots cool

Amend soil with carbon, such as compost and biochar

Move plants on cool cloudy damp days rather than on hot sunny days

Add 'Superthrive' (a registered vitamin formula for plants) to the watering can

Water well for a few weeks after planting

Use a dilute liquid fertilizer when watering

Every Autumn I host a 'Come and Dig PCI' day in my garden, to share out plants to other gardens in my community. I checked my plants this week; new fans are starting to form, and new roots are short. I'll wait a week or two, until new roots are more than an inch long. 

There are exceptions; one variety has long white roots and could be divided now, but it will tolerate moving in a few weeks. The seedling PCI can be planted anytime from now until early November. They are much tougher than fan sections, which is why growing PCI from seed is so successful for many gardeners. Society for Pacific Coast Native Iris will hold its seed exchange from 1 November to the end of the year, so now is the time to be thinking about what species and hybrids you'd like to grow in your garden from seed. 

New white roots, this PCI is ready for a new home.

For western gardeners, Autumn is the best time to plant many native plants, not just Pacifica Iris. Trees, shrubs, perennials, ferns and grasses all do well if planted now (late September to early November), as the weather cools and moisture arrives from the Pacific Ocean over western North America. This gives the plants a jump on growth for the coming year by establishing good root systems first, with much less water use now and in coming years. 

Purple Pacific Iris

Kathleen Sayce

Purple is a common color for many species of Pacifica Iris. Color saturation ranges from pale lavender to velvety dark purple. Many wild populations include lavender to purple flowers. Being a common color, you might think that it's boring. Hmm. Not. Between hues, shades and saturation, not to mention veins, signals, petal widths, and ruffles, there's a lot to explore, and more to come from hybridizing. 

This Iris douglasiana selection is short and blooms at the end of the main flowering period, which is June to early July in my climate. Timing makes up for the plain species-like flowers; when this one blooms, other PCIs are done.

As with other flower traits, petal widths, ruffling, signals and veining vary widely in wild flowers and in the garden, where hybridizers continue to push the boundaries on what is possible for iris flowers to achieve.

This orchid-purple iris is from Joy Creek Nursery. It was one of my very first PCIs, and is still one of my favorites. It has striking signals with a dark halo and veins on a light purple base, a yellow streak in the white, and the veins extend into the main falls. 

Sea coast populations of iris douglasiana in northern California include purple-flowered plants. Mendocino Coast Botanic Garden sells seeds from their plants, which grow on the sea cliffs in the botanic garden and seem right at home in my garden, six hundred miles north on Willapa Bay on the south coast of Washington. Similar plants flower hundreds of miles to the south at Pt Reyes, and on down the coast into central and Southern California. These plants are wind, salt and drought-hardy.

Iris douglasiana, from Mendocino Coast Botanic Gardens, has a small sturdy flower on stems held above the foliage. The plant is strong, the flowers are numerous, and the color is a nice medium purple.

A 'Gravitas' seedling has a large flower with a lovely dark color to the petals. 

Strong purples show up regularly in open pollinated garden crosses. I've learned to stop growing them all, lovely as each one is, I aim for sturdy plants with flowers held well above the foliage. This flower, above, was a surprise for its size, more than four inches across with nicely wide falls. 

Another purple favorite is an I. tenax x I. innominata cross, which produced a nice diversity of colorful seedlings, from this purple (below) to white, including some colorful veining variations in between.

This I. tenax x I. innominata seedling is one of five variations from the same seed lot, and shows the most purple. It's a reliable late spring to early summer flowering plant, long after the hybrids are done. 

PCI 'Valley Banner' was selected by Ruth Hardy from plants derived from a wild population of I. tenax x I. chrysophylla in the south Willamette Valley, in Oregon. Falls are white and heavily veined in dark purple; standards are white with narrow purple midrib; style arms are red purple. 

PCI 'Valley Banner' is a well-veined, bicolor combination. This photo was taken by Debby Cole. 

I've mentioned petal widths before, and here again are some of the variations, from wide and ruffly to narrow.

This seedling is almost pink, with a striking purple signal and central pale slash. The ruffles are over the top. This is a PCI 'San Benecio' seedling.

A neighbor showed me his PCIs this spring, and this lovely narrow-leaved specimen grew with more typical I. doug-type flowers. Why do I like narrow petals? They often hold up well in wet weather.

Will Plotner's PCI 'Wild Survivor' is a species-like hybrid with lavender flowers, slightly darker veins on the falls, and a white and yellow signal. This hybrid was a Mitchell Medal Winner a couple of years ago, see below.

PCI 'Wild Survivor' is a lavender hybrid with a species-like appearance. This can be very refreshing among highly ruffled and intensely colored selections. Photo by Richard Richards, from the SPCNI photo collection, thanks to Ken Walker. 

A maiden flower on a seedling from PCI 'Earthquake' at the south end of the yard was a lovely dark purple. The falls are velvety, ruffled, and intensely colored, with rich dark veining over the background color.

Then there is the impact of dark veins on light backgrounds, and complex signals, touched on initially with Joy Creek's orchid PCI, and again here, below, with a hybrid from Southern California. 

PCI 'Daria' has a light purple background, intense veining on falls and a large yellow signal; it's yet another variation on purple.

The take-home message about purple is that this color encompasses a wide range of hues, shades, saturations, and petal forms. As a foundation color PCIs, new variations will keep appearing for years to come. 

Four months of Pacifica Iris blooms, and still going in late June

Kathleen Sayce

This title is not a mistake, nor an Energizer battery advertisement: Pacifica Iris begin flowering in March, and are still flowering in my garden (on the West Coast at 46 N latitude) in June.  Blooms shift from one group to another over the months. I did not initially plan for a long bloom season, it happened by chance.  

An early I. douglasiana selection 

PCI 'Premontion of Spring' also flowers sporadically from fall to spring Equinox,
 ending in late March. 

The Pacifica Iris blooming year begins in the fall, with PCI 'Premontion of Spring', a hybrid developed by Garry Knipe, Cupertino, CA.   It flowers mid-fall through late winter. In my garden, it starts in September, and continues to spring, straddling the Fall to Spring equinoxes, tossing out a flower or two every few weeks. Garry is working on other early flowering hybrids, so look for more plants like this in coming years. 

I also grow several selections of Iris unguicularis, which flower sporadically through winter, peaking in March, and I. danfordiae and I. reticulata, which usually flower in February and March.

I. unguicularis flowers sporadically
all winter into early spring; not a
PCI, it may cross with them.

The main flowering event begins in mid March to early April, with many hybrids opening flowers in just a few weeks. The race is on each year to see which one will flower first. In 2015, PCI 'FingerPointing' had colored buds showing, but PCI 'Blue Plate Special' opened first. A week later, dozens of hybrids were flowering. 

PCI 'Blue Plate Special' is one of several
blues that come on in April.

PCI 'Daria' is another sturdy main season
flower.

This seedling yellow is from a mix of tall yellows
from Ghio; it also starts a bit later.

   

PCI 'Rodeo Gulch' starts a few weeks after other hybrids

This main season of blooms from hybrid plants lasts six to eight weeks or more, depending on weather. Hot days will bring flowers on quickly, and then finish quickly. In cool weather, the hybrids may flower for more than ten weeks, from early April well into June. Species that flower during this period include I. innominata (usually early), various I. douglasiana selections straddling the whole period, and I. chrysophylla.

By June, most hybrids are done. This year, PCI 'CapeFerrelo' and a seedling of PCI 'Untitled' kept opening flowers into mid June, one or two at a time. By then, the flower show shifted to Iris tenax, late flowering I. douglasiana types, and other species crosses, including I. tenax x I. innominata and I. chrysophylla x I. tenax.

Species flowers aren't as showy as hybrids, and the color palette is 

more limited, but a month after the commercial hybrids are done, these are going strong. I particularly like I. douglasiana from Mendocino Coast Botanic Gardens, and Cape Blanco, for their late purple flowers, and dwarf I. douglasiana, from the SPCNI seed exchange, for very low plants that flower in June to early July most years.  

I. tenax, Neahkahnie seacliffs, south
Clatsop Co., Oregon, has a
 wonderful late show of flowers

Wild-collected I. tenax from southern Clatsop County, Oregon, flowers reliably in June in my garden, usually peaking as the first lilies come into bloom. I also have a purple small-flowered I. douglasiana x I. chrysophylla, also from the seed exchange, that peaks in early June; the plant is taller than most hybrids; the latter tend to be well under two feet tall.

I. innominata x I. tenax is also late.
The original seed lot gave
 seven color patterns.

The nicest aspect of late flowering species is that bees easily find the flowers, which set a lot of seed to share out to others. In my garden, early to mid season flowers (PCI hybrids) don't always get pollinated. Poor seed set early in the season was very noticeable this year. I'm looking into ways to encourage bumblebees and other cool season bees to help this along. Early seed set is less problematic in warmer gardens, and plants are probably taller too.

Late and low-growing, this I. douglasiana is usually the last PCI to flower. Flowers and foliage are under 12 inches tall. 

I'm waiting to see which plants flower last this year: dwarf I. douglasiana or I. innominata x I. tenax? Meanwhile, lilies are opening first blooms all over the garden, and will carry the flower banner forward to early September.