By Gary Salathe
In July I put up a blog posting on this site about the Frazendeville irises titled: Blooming Irises, The Last Reminder of a Village That Was. The posting received more views than any other I have written and resulted in my getting numerous emails from blog readers. You can find the posting here.
We just found out that the documentary made about Frazendeville with its surprise iris ending has been posted onto YouTube. It's called; Battlegrounds: The Lost Community of Fazendeville. You can watch it here: https://youtu.be/NjlgGEksbIg
Enjoy!
The latest news is that my group received a permit from the US Park Service to collect seeds from the irises in July. Patrick O'Connor, with the Greater New Orleans Iris Society, helped plant them into containers with my partner in the project, Kristy Wallisch. Patrick was invited out to the Chalmette Battlefield to inspect the irises in April as they were blooming. Kristy has now found volunteers to grow the irises from the seeds for the purpose of confirming Patrick's suspicions that these are not the naturally occurring I. vinicolor hybrid irises, but are in fact a distinct hybrid. If that turns out to be the case, the plan is to register the iris with the American Iris Society as the "Frazendeville Iris". Stay Tuned!
