Much as been written about Clara
Rees' fortuitous cross of a diploid and a tetraploid that produced
the important parent Snow Flurry. For that reason, there is little
reason for me to rehash that part of the story in this blog.
Instead, I thought I would share some other memories of Clara and
Ruth Rees, two sisters that were iris pioneers in San Jose. If you do not know the story of 'Snow Flurry,' Mike
Unser 's blog will give you the details
here.
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| 'Snow Flurry'--Mike Unser imagr
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| Clara B. with Snow Flurry in the small garden behind the house before 1964--image from The Clara B. Rees Iris Society. |
I first met Clara Rees when I
interviewed her for a sophomore English class research paper. As a
retired English teacher, I shutter to think of trying to force
today's sophomores to actually write a research paper, but tangents
do not tell the Rees story.
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| Left to right: Keith Keppel, Clara B. Rees, Ruth Rees, and Glenn Corlew--Photo from Region 14 Fall Bulletin 1964 |
By the time I became interested in
irises, Ruth was the person with the deeper interest in them. Clara
loved plants, all plants, and she was a putter. She puttered with
this plant and that plant—she grew lovely amaryllis and by the
garage she had created a strain of true lilies that grew and bloomed
year after year; that was and would be today a real accomplishment
since true lilies in this Mediterranean climate are lovely the first
year, iffy the second, and by the third, they have disappeared.
Clara herself was self-effacing
and shy. Always diffident to others, she was rarely seen in the
garden during bloom season and Ruth would twist her arm to get her to
make a few crosses each year. When I was in the garden, occasionally
Clara would come fetch me and take me to see her latest interesting
bloom—often it was a lovely amaryllis on the front porch. On very
rare occasions, I was invited into the kitchen for milk or hot
chocolate and cake or another dessert that Clara had baked. Those
were very rare occasions.
Ruth's role in the 'Snow Flurry' story is well documented since she took the blossom to Berkeley by
light rail (a sad commentary, today, about the decline of public
transportation in our area). Ruth ran the garden which was spread
out over several deep lots on Bird Avenue in San Jose. Each year
Ruth placed a Mother's Day ad—6 pink irises for $5.00 and several
times I had a hand in digging the plants, preparing them, and having
them ready for that two day sale.
My understanding is that Ruth had
worked for the government during World War II in public relations and
into the 1970's she ran her own successful PR firm out of the
historic Security Building on 1st Street in San Jose. The
one time I visited her office, the building had become shabby, but it
managed to survive the demolitions that destroyed too much of SJ and
the building has now been restored to its century-old splendor.
Sometime before I became involved,
Ruth had pontificated that NO one in Santa Clara County should
introduce iris until Clara was no longer around. It was, of course,
a silly pronouncement that had been ignored, though it had cause hard
feelings.
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| AIS Bulletin Image |
About the time my garden was first
opened for a spring regional, my mother decreed that the 40 foot long
bed in the front yard needed to be planted all is Snow Flurry. While
Ruth always had a huge drift of Snow Flurry in the back of the garden, she was,
nevertheless, hard pressed to come up with sufficient plants. In the
spring, Snow Flurry was is in good bloom. From thereafter, when I
visited Ruth in the early spring, Ruth would always cut a bouquet of
camellia flowers from the massive bush in the front yard and have me
take the flowers to my mother.
After Clara's death, Ruth continued
the nursery for a number of years and introduced the last of Clara's
hybrids including the horribly named Clara's Black. While she had
insisted that no one introduce until Clara's death, she ultimately
became very proud of the new generation of hybridizers in the area.
She even had a protegee—Ed Sellman. Ed had some lovely irises, but
they never caught on with the AIS crowd. During the years, I sold
1000s of plants of his lovely Modern Venus; Bill Maryott, when he
sold to the carriage trade from his nursery adjacent to the Rees
property, sold lots of King's Pick to the public; and I was delighted
last year to see Napa Country Iris Gardens still selling a Sellman
iris, African Nights, a sure sign that it is popular with the public.
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| Ed Sellman's 'African Nights'--Napa Country Iris image used by permission |
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As age and death tightened the
circle of Ruth's friends, Ruth seemed indestructibility. She always
had a new car—not a new car in the normal sense, but a new car from
one of her circle of friends who could no longer drive and the car
itself would be 10 or more years old with low mileage on it—it
had been driven twice a week, once to church and once to the store.
Even after Ruth had a major stroke
and could not talk, she continued to be a scrapper. At first her
rehab had her living with a family near Alma Street and she would be
found pushing her walker, block after block on the street; later when
she returned home, she would be seen out walking back and forth in
what was left of the garden.
After her death, the house was
empty for several years and then one spring, Bill Maryott and Marilyn
Harlow were helping garden visitors when the realized one of the
women had a stack of iris materials: the niece and nephew had started
a garage sale that morning and put out iris books, Bulletins, and
other materials. When Bill and Marilyn went over, little was left. To this day
it is a mystery what happened to Clara's Hybridizier's Medal; Ruth had
a first edition Dykes The Genus Iris and she had always said
that it would be left to the Clara B. Rees Iris Society when she
died, but the book never arrived. Years later Jack Alvarez was able
to trade irises for the plaque Region 14 had given Clara for 'Snow
Flurry.' The image of Clara in this blog with 'Snow Flurry,' sadly, is the only picture of Clara left in the Clara B. Rees Iris Society materials.
