Lloyd Austin: Pioneering Iris Hybrizider: Part 1

By Jean Richter

                               Turkish Topaz (Austin 1962)

Part I: Early Life and Arilbreds

Around 15 years ago, when I first became interested in iris, I spent a few years merely assisting my housemate with the care of several pots of iris she had rescued from her late mother’s garden. What really got me hooked on iris was a visit to Bluebird Haven Iris Garden, located near Placerville, California (we had gone there in search of identifications for my housemate’s iris). Among the great variety of beautiful iris in bloom there, I was particularly struck by the space-agers – those iris featuring unusual beards in the form of horns, spoons, and flounces. I ordered some rhizomes, and the rest, as they say, is history – I now grow close to 300 different iris.

Love them or hate them, we have hybridizer Lloyd Austin to thank for the space age iris. It was through his vision and dedication that these varieties came into being, and for me it is a pity that he did not live to see the prominence and popularity that space age iris now enjoy - a space age iris was first awarded a Dykes Medal (the highest honor an iris can receive) more than twenty years after his death.

                                 Horned Flare (Austin 1963)

Lloyd Austin made many other contributions to the iris world besides the space agers, however– lesser known, but equally important to his legacy, are his contributions to the development and popularization of aril and arilbred iris, as well as reblooming iris.

Exotic Fire (Austin 1964) reblooming iris

Lloyd Austin was born in 1898 in Westfield, Massachusetts. After serving in World War I, he became an instructor in the Pomology Department at the University of California’s College of Agriculture at Davis. [For those ignorant of the meaning of the term (including the author before she researched this article), pomology is the science of fruit and nut production and distribution.] In 1925 he became the first director of the Institute of Forest Genetics in Placerville, California. 

By 1944 he had determined that he was going to hybridize iris, with his initial specialization being aril and arilbred iris (aril iris are exotic desert iris found from the Middle East to the Himalayas, and arilbreds are hybrids of aril and tall bearded iris). For a time just prior to the establishment of his own Rainbow Hybridizing Gardens in 1946, he was associated with Carl Salbach’s iris enterprise in Berkeley,  California, an association that was later to prove crucial in the development of the first space age iris.

                          Flounced Frivolite (Austin 1964) 

Rainbow Hybridizing Gardens published its first catalog in 1946, and remained in business for twenty years. After Lloyd Austin’s death in 1963, his widow Gladys kept the business going for a few final years in order to introduce his last few cultivars, but sadly the enterprise ceased operations for good after 1966.

Once he had established his interest in aril and arilbred iris hybridizing, Austin began the laborious process of accumulating stock in sufficient quantity to launch his ambitious breeding program. World War II had a very serious impact on aril iris – the old Middle East sources were eliminated by the war, and most of the European dealers and growers lost their entire stock. One of the first, and most important, of Austin’s accomplishments in the aril world was to relocate sources for these iris, bringing them back into commerce or introducing them into commerce for the first time. At the time of his death, almost all of the rare aril species stocks in the U.S.A. originated from his importations.

                                Gold of Ophir (Austin 1955)

In the ensuing years Austin introduced many arils and aril hybrids; some based on pure aril parents, and others derived from the van Tubergen regeliocycli crossed with oncocyclus species or hybrids. He was particularly responsible for rediscovering and publicizing the fertility of the regeliocycli. He also worked extensively with the oncobreds; introducing a large number of new varieties, including one of the few ‘Capitola’ seedlings in a yellow color range, ‘Real Gold’ (1952).

Sadly, in the late 1950s Austin made the difficult decision to discontinue his aril and arilbred hybridization program. Given the difficulties growing these iris, issues with delayed germination, and the niche status of the aril/arilbred market, financial considerations forced him to concentrate his hybridizing efforts on the more profitable tall bearded iris in order to keep his business viable. He still continued to publicize and sell arilbreds in his later catalogs, however.

Coming up in Part 2: reblooming iris and the dawn of the space age… Editor's Note: This is a revised and edited version of an article first published in The Bulletin of Region 14, American Iris Society.

Winter Iris Gardening

by Tom Waters

This being the day after Christmas, it seemed appropriate to write something "seasonal" for this blog post. So what does winter mean for the iris grower?

A word to the wise: Iris growers live in many, many different climates. What is true in one climate may be false in another. Be suspicious of any gardening advice on such topics as winter care that is written as though it applies everywhere. In this post, I'll mention a few things that one might want to consider, but I do not offer any absolute advice. For that, you need to speak with other gardeners in your own area or just do some trial-and-error work on your own.

All irises grow in temperate climates. They are adapted to the changing seasons. Most kinds have periods of rapid growth in spring and autumn, but slow down or go dormant in summer and winter. In fact, irises need a distinct winter with cold temperatures in order to bloom; they will not do well in tropical climates.

Selecting irises for your winter conditions. All garden irises are ultimately derived from wild iris species from different parts of the northern hemisphere. The climate where those species live can tell you something about how those irises will do in various climates. Louisiana irises, for example, are native to the southeastern US, where winters are mild and summers are warm and wet.

Among the bearded irises, winter hardiness varies a great deal. The original diploid tall bearded irises come from the species Iris pallida and Iris variegata, native to central Europe, often at rather high altitudes. They have little difficulty surviving cold winters. These diploid types are today mostly found among the miniature tall bearded (MTB) irises. Modern tetraploid tall bearded irises also have species from the eastern Mediterranean in their ancestry, meaning that some of them fare poorly in colder climates. Depending on the particular mix of genes, modern TBs can be utterly hardy or quite tender, or anything in between. So how is one to know? Checking with other growers in your own area is always good advice, but one can also take a clue from the region where the iris was originally hybridized. Irises bred in Canada or in the US midwest are almost certain to be suited to cold winters, while those from the Pacific coast are not necessarily so. Border bearded irises (BBs) have the same ancestry as TBs, and so the same considerations apply.

Among the dwarf and median classes, miniature dwarfs (MDBs), standard dwarfs (SDBs), and intermediates (IBs) virtually all have Iris pumila in their ancestry. This tiny species is a native of central and eastern Europe, growing at higher elevations and in more continental climates than most of the TB species. It is very hardy, perhaps to a fault, because it has a reputation for failing to grow and bloom well in climates with mild winters. Consequently, growers in places like southern California and Arizona sometimes find that these types (the MDBs especially) do not do well for them.

Arilbreds vary in their degree of winter hardiness. The aril species grow in southwestern and central Asia. Although some of these are adapted to the very warm climate of the deserts of Israel, Jordan, and Syria, most arils are in fact mountain plants used to extreme winter cold and extreme summer heat. So why do northern growers find many arilbreds too tender for their climates? The fault is probably in their TB ancestry. The center of early arilbred breeding was Southern California, and the TBs used in arilbred breeding were those that did well in that mild-winter climate.

Having made these generalizations, I encourage iris growers to experiment with types that "conventional wisdom" might recommend against. Every garden has microclimates, and every category of irises has cultivars that are surprisingly adaptable.

Winter care: mulching. Irises are not very different in their needs from other perennials you may grow, so in climates where winter mulch is beneficial, it can be applied to iris plantings as well. The main purpose of a winter mulch is not to keep the plants warm, but to moderate the cycles of alternate freezing and thawing that can push plants out of the ground expose them to risk of winter rot. Snow makes an excellent insulator. If your climate is such that you can count on a fairly thick cover of snow all winter long, you have the ideal natural winter mulch!

I am not so fortunate here in northern New Mexico. We get temperatures below 0 degrees Fahrenheit every winter, most often without any snow cover at all. I do not apply a heavy much, but I do allow garden debris to stay in place over winter, giving the crowns of the plants some buffer against the wind and cold. I also put down a layer of cotton bur compost in the late autumn. Winter weather gradually degrades it and incorporates it into the soil, but in the meanwhile it seems to offer a little protection.

Beware that mulches can harbor overwintering insect pests and can collect water. In climates where these are issues of concern, it is best to forgo mulch.

Winter care: water. In climates where the ground freezes, watering in winter is nor desirable, and often not even possible, so winter offers relief from this particular garden duty. Many gardening books seem to assume this is true everywhere. However, if you live in a dry climate with spells of warm weather during the winter, you should pay attention and provide a little supplemental water as needed to keep the garden from becoming totally desiccated. Not much is needed: remember that the plants are dormant or semi-dormant, and that evaporation is less because of the cool temperatures.

Seeds! For those of us who like to grow irises from seeds, winter is an important time. Like most temperate perennials, irises have seeds that resist germination during the winter, to sprout when spring arrives. The cold and wet of winter are actually part of the preparation they need to germinate. The simplest way to grow irises from seeds is to plant them outdoors in the autumn, where they can overwinter and come up the following spring. Nature is unpredictable, of course, so many people prefer to use an indoor refrigeration process to replicate winter conditions. I'm not really set up for that kind of project, so I plant mine outdoors and let nature do her work.

Seeds from my own crosses get planted around the time of the first frost in autumn. Those I get from seed exchanges or other providers usually come later, in December or January. The longer they have to experience the winter wet and cold, the better. Since winter and spring weather here is erratic, germination is unpredictable. I generally leave the seeds in place for several years.

I hope I've touched on at least a few topics of interest. What are your own experiences of irises and winter?