Did We Give Up on the Recessive Amoenas too Early?

By Kevin Vaughn

Amoenas and variegatas have long been favorites of iris growers.  The early amoenas and variegatas were all derived from I. variegata and had many problems associated with that species, chiefly very veined hafts, and a pattern of striped falls rather than solid ones.  Breeders were persistent in their work, despite poor germination of crosses involving amoenas. Cultivars like the Dykes Medal winner dark purple amoena ‘Wabash’ and variegatas like ‘Mexico’ and ‘Pretender’ were very popular irises in their day and had covered up most of the problems in this breeding line.  In fact, ‘Wabash’ topped the AIS popularity poll for many years. Crosses of these recessive amoenas to yellow amoenas resulted in the unusual green amoena ‘Frosted Mint’ (one of my childhood favorites) and red amoena ‘Repartee’. (Editor's note: Kevin sent images of seedlings as examples and I do not have numbers for any of these photos, but they give an idea of what he is getting out of these lines.)

A revolution happened in the 50’s when Paul Cook found that I. reichenbachii had a dominant inhibitor of the TB anthocyanins in the standards only, resulting in amoenas, neglectas, and bicolor patterns only dreamed about in the past.  Paul’s ‘Whole Cloth’ won the Dykes Medal and most deservedly so as it was not only a beautiful iris but an important breeders’ iris as well. Almost all breeders made a few crosses with ‘Whole Cloth’ and generally with good results.  Moreover, these dominant amoenas had seed that germinated well and the flowers had none of the veined hafts so typical of the recessive amoenas of the past. People flocked to these amoenas, basically dropping the old recessive amoenas, although Jesse Wills, Catherine and Kenneth Smith and a few other brave souls kept the recessive amoenas going for a while. Catherine Smith’s ‘Bread and Wine’ may be the last of these, in the 1970’s.

In the MTBs, recessive amoenas and variegatas are alive and well!  In fact, if you breed MTBs you can’t help but getting them in spades.  As I looked through my patch of MTB seedlings this past spring, I saw many colors and patterns that I have not seen much or at all in the TBs.  The variety of variegatas is quite staggering, including those with patterning of colors on the falls, stitching on the standards, and several just in STRIPES.  In the opposite direction, my ‘Booyah’ and many of its seedlings had nearly solid falls with minimal haft marks. Amoenas followed the same patterns, with some striped variations in delicate stripes and some all-over versions as well as nearly solid colored falls.  When Rick Tasco, Roger Duncan and Keith Keppel stopped by one day, they were equally impressed in the variety of colors and patterns that were occurring in these recessive amoenas and variegatas.

When these recessive amoenas and variegatas are crossed into the plicatas and then recombined the variety of plicata patterns also increased with lots of strong bitoned and bicolor plicatas plus unusual distributions of the dots and spots.  I inherited a number of Jean Witt’s seedlings and she had explored these variegata-influenced plicatas a good bit. Crosses with them give even further variations. Some of these plicatas have the looks of things that Rick Ernst got out of his ‘Ring Around Rosie’ lines.  These tetraploid lines may have some variegata influence too.

Catherine Smith sent me a plant of ‘Repartee’ when I was a kid. I was impressed with how red the falls of that iris are and especially so when it bloomed in my garden in 1968!  Amazingly it still looks very red to me. ‘Repartee’ is a cross of the purple neglecta ‘Grosvenor’ with a yellow amoena and that overlay of strong purple with an inner yellow layer gives a very red effect.  Admittedly, ‘Repartee’ has some problems. The stalk is awful with buds toed in and the form of the flower is a bit “blobby”, although I have seen worse.

Fortunately yellow amoenas have improved a LOT since 1968 and I crossed several of them onto ‘Repartee’.  The F1 crosses of ‘Repartee’ X yellow amoenas gave almost all red amoenas/ pale variegatas. The stalks on these were much better than ‘Repartee’ and the forms began to approach the yellow amoenas.  Rather than sibbing these seedlings, I crossed them once again to yellow amoenas, hoping to obtain even better form. Those seedlings bloomed in 2018 and the improvements were noticeable. Much better forms and quite red falls were the norm.  Interestingly, several of these seedlings didn’t have solid falls but rather a splashed phenotype. Yellow amoenas have the dominant inhibitor I that suppresses anthocyanin production but the anthocyanins in amoenas are not fully inhibited by this gene.  It is possible that these anthocyanin-free sectors are due to some partial inhibition by I.  None of these is quite a finished product but they are interesting and with quite good color and very vigorous plants.  I’ll see ~50of the best of these red amoenas sib crossed (best form X best color) in the spring. I don’t expect any introductions from this line in the near future, but it’s been fun to see what the recessive amoenas can do.

This makes me wonder out loud whether we were wise in giving up on recessive amoenas too early despite their many problems.  Hopefully there will be a few more brave souls out there to use them in crosses.

Favorite REDS for the holidays!

By Renee Fraser

Red is my favorite garden color, and irises are my favorite flowers.  I am smitten with the combination red, green and white, and some day I imagine my entire garden will be these colors.  So I am always on the lookout for new attempts to make red irises.

The pigments that give irises their colors are purple and yellow-gold, so creating red irises poses a challenge.  The New York Times featured this problem in an article (here) on the work being done by hybridizers like the late Richard Ernst in conjunction with Oregon State University to create red irises.

Brick reds, pinkish reds and burgundy/maroons have been mastered by iris hybridizers, even if true scarlet-reds are still down the road.

This photograph, posted last year by Rita on Gardenweb, caused me to go over my self-imposed budget on a single iris rhizome.  Rita gardens on Long Island, focusing on daylilies, roses, and irises.

'Rio Rojo' Photo by Rita 

Red irises are fantastic garden plants- they coordinate perfectly with the red colors of foliage plants.  Brenda Fox also gardens in New York.  She planted an entire bed in reds.  Here is 'Samurai Warrior' in her garden with red barberry.

'Samurai Warrior' Photo by Brenda Fox

Susanne Spicker also gardens with coordinating colors.  Here is one of her favorite reds:

'Play With Fire' Susanne Spicker

Red irises can stand by themselves in a landscape.  This charming garden was captured by Joel Schaber while he was vacationing in Oregon.

  NOID Photo by Joel Schaber

Red amoenas!   Amoenas are my favorite irises, and red is my favorite flower color.  'Ecstatic Echo' did not grow well for me, but it is still my very favorite iris.  The standards are a bit lavendar, and the falls a bit rusty, but it's getting close to a red amoena.

'Ecstatic Echo'

'Ecstatic Echo'

I often see 'Lady Friend' in lists of red irises.  What do you think, red, or dark pink?

'Lady Friend' with 'Frequent Flyer'

Here's 'Dynamite', which was named as a favorite red by numerous people on the Facebook forum Iris Lovers.

'Dynamite' Photo by Susanne Spicker

'Rip City' is an iris I grow in my garden for its landscape value.  It has a long bloom period and a rusty color that goes well with Japanese Blood Grass.

'Rip City'

Other tall bearded favorites listed by iris fans included 'Lest We Forget', a rebloomer, 'Cardinal Rule', 'House Afire', 'Red Skies', 'Smoky Shadows', 'Nebraska Big Red', 'Battle Royale', 'Classic Bordeaux', 'Rogue', and 'Trial By Fire'.


Favorite median irises included the Standard Dwarf Bearded iris 'Exotic Eyes'.

'Exotic Eyes' Joel Schaber

'Redrock Princess' just came in as the first runner up for the Williamson-White Medal for MTB irises.  It is among the favorites of Joel Schaber in his Idaho garden.

'Redrock Princess' Photo by Joel Schaber

Sandra Eggertson, who owns Merlebleu, an iris display garden in Canada, chose Intermediate Bearded Iris 'Red Zinger' as one of her favorites.

'Red Zinger' Photo by Sandra Eggertson

LAs have slightly different chemistry than the bearded irises, so there are some very RED Louisiana irises.  Look at the blazing red color of my favorite, 'Red Echo.'

'Red Echo' Photo by Margie Valenzuela

Here is a lovely shot of of a species iris.

Iris nelsonii

Iris fulva can look very red indeed., or it can appear to be more red-orange.

Iris fulva  Photo by Rodney Barton

Iris fulva  Photo by Rodney Barton

Some day hybridizers will create true red irises, but along the way, they have created many spectacular flowers that are excellent garden plants.

Do you grow red irises in your garden?  I am waiting for the perfect red amoena, and Lucy Burton, an avocational hybridizer, tells me she is working on it in Standard Dwarf Bearded irises.  What kind of a red iris would you like to see in the future?