by Tom Waters
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| 'Catchy Name' (Seligmann, 1983) |
One of the things you may notice about serious iris
enthusiasts (sometimes known as “irisarians”), as opposed to gardeners who
casually grow a few, is an obsession with names. We go around earnestly
correcting the names of irises people share on line or in person, sometimes
even to the point of calling out minor spelling errors.
What is this about? Surely the flower’s loveliness and
welcome presence in our gardens doesn’t depend on its name. Why is it
so important to some of us enthusiasts?
It’s one of those things that most of us get very much
indoctrinated about, early on in the learning process, as the iris hobby becomes
more and more serious. It’s been part of iris culture for generations.
At one time, you see, names were in a state of chaos. The
same plant would be passed around under any number of different names, and
similar plants were sold or shared under the same name. Names would be casually
translated from one language to another, with no one quite sure if they were
meant to refer to the same plant or not. One of the first goals of the American
Iris Society in the 1920s was to try to straighten out the confusion, by
carefully documenting names from old magazine articles and catalogs and
compiling a checklist. The American Iris Society is the international
registration authority for all irises except those that grow from bulbs (like
Dutch Iris and reticulatas). Ideally, every name is registered with the AIS
along with a careful description before the iris it belongs to is sold or
shared.
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| Iris pallida variegata, sometimes grown under the incorrect name "Zebra" |
Without this care, the names become practically meaningless,
and one cannot reliably purchase a particular cultivar or discuss its qualities
with other growers.
This is especially important because so many irises resemble
others, at least at first glance. Casual gardeners may be inclined to think
that all pink irises are the same, or that the one they just bought from a
garden center is “the same iris” grandma grew years ago, because they are both
purple.
Any time an iris is sold or shared under an incorrect name,
it makes headaches for those further down the line who want to know which iris
they actually have.
Irises whose names are unknown are these days often called
“noids” (for “no ID”). The term is cute and memorable, but alas it’s too close
to the name of a well-known hybridizer of some decades past, Luella Noyd, so I
prefer to avoid it. I’ve also seen them spoken of as UFOs (unidentified
flowering objects).
The Internet has taken the problem of identifying irises to
a whole new level. It has made it 100 times easier to get information on any
subject, but 10,000 easier to get bad information on any subject, it seems.
Every day, people post photos of irises asking for the name, and often just
accept the first answer someone throws out. That can be worse than having no
answer at all!
Very few irises are so distinctive that they can be
unambiguously identified at a glance from a single photo. The only way to check
a tentative identification is to acquire the true plant from a reliable source
and grow it alongside your own. They should be identical in detail.
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| BB 'Oops' (Craig, 2003) |
So what is a “reliable source”? The “big box” stores are
notorious in selling mislabeled irises. Local garden centers are better, but
still make quite a few mistakes. Iris sellers on Ebay are all over the map in
terms of reliability. Your best bet is to stick to sellers who specialize in
irises. Even that is not foolproof. A few years ago, I ordered the iris ‘Orange
Crush’ from an iris grower with impeccable credentials. When it bloomed, it was
not even the right color! I wrote to him and inquired about it. It turns out he
grows his plants in alphabetical order, and the one I got was the previous one
in the alphabet. Its name? ‘Oops’. That gave us a chuckle.
Some name confusions have been going on for so long that it
can be quite difficult to sort them out. When I started growing irises in Las
Cruces, New Mexico, in the 1970s, a number of local growers had a historic iris
‘Mme. Chereau’. We all loved it, not least because it had been around since
1844! It turned out the plant we were all growing was actually an even older
cultivar, ‘Swerti’. But because we had all seen it in each others’ gardens, we
“knew” it was ‘Mme. Chereau’. A photo
of the impostor even made it into the American Iris Society book, The World of Irises, showing how
difficult it can be to be sure of identifications, even on the best authority.
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'Mme. Chereau' (Lemon, 1844)
photo: Mike Starhill |
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| 'Swerti' |
Aware of this long-standing confusion, I resolved a couple
years ago to grow these two irises in my garden and familiarize myself with
their differences. Ironically, the ‘Mme. Chereau’ I acquired to make the
comparison turned out to be – you guessed it! – ‘Swerti’.
A word of caution: The on-line Iris Encyclopedia, although
hosted by the American Iris Society, is (like Wikipedia) maintained by users,
and is not authoritative. The entries for some irises have incorrect photos.
For older irises, the
Historic Iris Preservation Society is the best
source of identification expertise. HIPS is home to experts who have made
identification of older cultivars into a passion, delving into the subject with
persistence and dedication, unearthing old photographs, documents, and
descriptions. There are some confusions so old and entrenched, however, that
even the experts can hold different views. Some irises have had whole articles
and book chapters written about them, as researchers struggle to sort out their
identity.
But you don’t have to be an expert to help with the problem
of misidentified irises. Anyone can help by following one simple rule: don’t pass
an iris around unless you are sure it is correctly named. If it came to you
without a name, this will often mean growing the real thing side by side with
your orphan. Even passing an iris on saying that you don’t know its name is not
a good idea. Inevitably, someone down the line will be growing it and decide
they “know” what it is anyway!
A second bit of advice: Don’t become indignant or defensive
when someone tells you your iris is misidentified. It’s not a criticism, it’s a
gift of better information than you had before! A thank-you is the appropriate response.
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| unidentified yellow TB |
Some growers just destroy anything they are not sure of.
That’s one way solve the problem, but sometimes an unidentified iris just
pleads with you to give it a home. When we moved into our present house, there
were some irises growing on the property. They turned out to be a yellow tall
bearded, apparently of mid-twentieth-century vintage. They outperform almost
everything else I grow, with tall stalks, clear color, and a long period of
bloom. It’s hard to say good-bye to one of the best irises you have! I suspect
this iris is the classic variety ‘Ola Kala’, but I will not share it under that
name until such time as it passes the side-by-side test.
