The American Iris Society
Announces
THE WILLIAM A. MOHR MEDAL
‘SRI LANKA’
‘SRI LANKA’ (T.Johnson ‘10). Sri Lanka has many excellent
traits including strong growth and clumps loaded with stalks having 2 branches
and up to 6 buds. White standards have prominent, strong gold midribs and edges
that curl back slightly to reveal yellow styles. Slightly recurved light
greenish yellow falls have diffuse mid gold spots encircling soft yellow to
tangerine beards.
This medal is restricted to irises of one-quarter or more
aril content that do not meet the more restrictive requirements of the Clarence
G. White Medal.
It is named in honor of William A. Mohr (1871-1923). About
ten years before his death, Mohr began working with irises. He obtained the
tetraploid Asiatic species, as well as regelia and oncocyclus irises, and
communicated with other iris hybridizers such as Ellen Sturtevant and Samuel
Stillman Berry. The two greatest achievements of William Mohr's hybridizing programs
are probably his plicatas and his innovative and beautiful arilbreds. His great
plicatas are `Los Angeles' and the iris that won the first American Dykes
Medal, `San Francisco.' Mohr's most important arilbred iris is the magnificent
`William Mohr.'
The World of Irises blog will be posting once a day all
of the medal winners. The entire list of winners can be found at http://irises.org/About_Irises/Awards_Surveys/AIS_Awards.html,
the AIS Encyclopedia and later in the AIS Bulletin, IRISES. Pictures can be
found at http://wiki.irises.org/Main/InfoAwards2018.
