What was your first flower?

Kathleen Sayce

There’s a theory that people who like plants and garden throughout their lives express that fascination at a very young age. It usually happens between ages 3 and 5, when we are avidly exploring the world. I know a birder who made that initial and lasting connection with another life form at age 2 (mallard duck), and wildlife biologists, ditto, ages 4 and 6 (rabbits and deer). 

A Pacifica Iris seedling in my garden, 2021

What was your first flower? Did that sense of connection change as you grew up?

I have a friend whose first fascinating organism was a pansy, at age 3. He saw a flowering pot at his grandparent’s house; his grandmother was a lifelong gardener. He picked it up, studied the plant, and was drawn in by the flower’s colors, complexity and petal shapes. He became a horticulturist, worked in well-known gardens and nurseries across the country, and now grows plants from all over the world, has a seedling garden where he grows dahlia crosses, and does amazing flower arrangements. Flowers became his life at age 3. 

For me, the fatally attractive flower was an iris, age 2. There was the snaky rhizome, creeping across the surface of the ground. It was so un-plant-like! The flower was stunning: standards and falls and shaggy beards in a fascinating asymmetry. The light shining through the purple petals was amazing. And the shape of the flower buds was simply entrancing. 

I now know this was a purple-flowered tall bearded iris, but to my young self, it opened up a view into the other half of the living world—plants. 

I wanted to weed out the grasses and study how it grew, but my mom disagreed. She said the flowers were old fashioned; she planned a vegetable garden in that spot. We had just moved to a new house, and the next year she did indeed put in a vegetable garden with pole peas and beans, radishes, carrots, zucchini, and an asparagus patch. I promptly began checking radishes every few days to see how the root developed into a round edible vegetable, but that’s another story. Suffice it to say my parents were not pleased to find the radish seedlings vanishing day by day. 

My love of that first iris flower morphed into a fascination with all things chlorophyllous, which led me into lichens, mosses, kelps, wildflowers, and eventually into Pacifica Iris. 

What’s your story?

Golden Iris Flowering in my Garden

 By Kathleen Sayce

I wrote about the golden iris misses in my garden during my search for Iris innominata plants and or seeds from various sources in October 2021. Since then Tom Fischer, a member of the Society for Pacific Coast Native Iris, took pity on me and shared seeds from his plants with me two years ago, and this spring, here's the result--flowers!

Iris innominata flowering in my garden with good dark yellow base color and red veins. 

I have several pots, so my next garden project is figuring out where to grow my own patch of this species. It is going to take a few years for my plants to come close to their parents, but as we know, gardening is all about patience. 

A beautiful clump of golden iris in Tom Fischer's garden.  

All it took was 27 years of patience and a determination to keep trying! Thanks, Tom!

First Flowers From "Dark Rose with Gold Signal" Seeds

by Kathleen Sayce

Rain was due on the night of May 1, so I went out before dark to take photos of first flowers that opened that day and the day before from one seed lot that was described in the Society for Pacific Coast Native Irises seed list a couple of years ago as having a pod parent with dark rose and gold signal flowers. 

The seeds were from Debby Cole's garden on Mercer Island near Seattle. These were the first flowers I have seen from this seed group. 

More than two decades ago, I had plans to select for new Pacifica iris with weather-resistant petals and clear, well-saturated colors that were adapted to my local climate. In the intervening years, I found that said climate is not conducive to hand pollination, or at times any pollination at all, of Pacifica irises. To put this simply, it's usually too wet and windy to hand pollinate Pacificas when modern hybrids are in flower. 

I tried small protective covers of twin-wall polycarbonate, weighted down with bricks to keep the wind from pulling them off and sailing them around the yard. Nope, still too windy; and often, the rain is horizontal, even in April and May. Flowers blow off stems, petals melt, or pollen simply does not germinate on the styles. 

These days, I get seeds from the SPCNI seed catalog and enjoy the fruits of other gardens instead. So here's what I have so far in 2022:

First up is a gold signal, rose veins and apricot base color combination that is quite lovely. The petals are not overly frilled and have a nice substance. I will be checking this and others in the wet weather to come to see how they hold up. 

The next flower is a lovely medium rose, dark rose veins on the falls, gold signal. It too has nice substance. What will the rain do to this one?

Darker rose, wider petals, and much darker rose veining to the petal tips, an interesting signal with a white outer area and a gold inner area. This iris is intriguing for the complexity of the falls, and its darker rose color. 

The last one is a good example of what goes astray between one's intentions in hybridizing and reality.  While I was trying to focus on the dark falls, I knocked this flower off the stem! Luckily, there is another flower on the same stem, and another stem still developing. While the coming storm won't help me see how it survives rain, the next few flowers may. 

It has smaller petals than the other three with nice substance to them, as irises with simpler petals seem to have.  There is also an interesting hint of paler color on the developing style arms--we'll have to wait for the next flowers to know for sure. 

So there you have it:  four out of eighteen pots, all with different flowers!