Friday Video: Bearded irises through time

I'm fascinated by how plants change through time in the hands of human breeders and gardeners. So I decided to make a little video to better visualize it. I went through the American Iris Society Wiki (http://wiki.irises.org/) and grabbed images of 189 varieties introduced in the last century, more or less distributed evenly across the decades. String them together in a video, and you can watch how breeders have modified bearded irises over the last 100 years. Most dramatically, the falls get shorter and rounder, and the petal edges get ever increasingly frilled and ruffled.

It is pretty cool, if you are a breeding nerd like me. I'm sure the flowers are getting bigger as well, though you can't see it in this video, since the flowers are not to scale. I'm also realizing that I think I like the mid-century varieties better than the super frilly modern ones. Which did you like best?

Dwarf irises for early spring euphoria.

I adore the little dwarf bulbous irises -- I. reticulata, various related species and hybrids. They flower super early, mine have been blooming for about a month now, and unlike, say, snowdrops, which one only loves because they are early (I mean, really, if snowdrops bloomed in June, no one would have ever heard of them) these little guys have some of the most incredibly beautiful, intricate, fragrant flowers I know of.

I planted the hybrid 'George' just three years ago, and already the original few bulbs have begun multiplying into generous clumps. This past fall I added 'Harmony' (rich blue) "Katherine Hodgekins' (pale blue) and I. danfordiea (yellow) all of which went together to create a cheerful and intensely fragrant bouquet for my mother-in-law's birthday this past weekend

Smudge, our cat, liked it too.

I've heard from other people that dwarf irises sometimes fail to rebloom in subsequent years, but I've never had that be a problem. I think the key is good drainage and full sun while their foliage is up in the spring. But even if they didn't rebloom for me, I wouldn't be without them. They are beautiful, cheap, and easy. What more could you ask for?

Bearded irises: not so boring afterall?

Bearded irises. I've always thought of them as being pretty in a generic, over-planted way, when they flower, but inclined to require staking (I hate staking), with foliage that starts off nice but quickly gets all disease ridden and yeck (one of the side effects of living somewhere it rains all the time, I suppose).

But, recently I've been talking to the one and only Kelly D. Norris, who (in addition to a lot of other stuff. He's kind of insane. In a good way) runs Rainbow Iris Farms.  He's starting to change my mind -- or at least, getting me to give irises a second chance. Basically, he's doing this by tempting me on his nursery's on-line catalog with photos like this (all photos stolen borrowed with permission from Kelly):

'Giggles and Grins'

I mean, SERIOUSLY?

'Consummation'

These ain't your Grandma's bearded irises...

'Jive'

'African Wine'

When I asked him about staking, he said "medians" don't need it. Bearded irises, like so many groups of plants that have been grown and bred and exhibited and obsessed over for a long time, have their own wacked-out language to describe themselves. The plants are broken down into categories like "Plicata," "Neglecta" and (my favorite) "Miniature Tall" (It used to be called "big small" but they decided that was too confusing). All these terms apparently mean things to Iris People. Kelly spent a while explaining it to me... still don't make much sense, but hey, who cares. They have flowers that look like this:

'Just a Croc'

When I asked him about foliage diseases... well, he said "they can do that." Which isn't exactly comforting, but with incredibly flowers like that, I think I'll be willing to put up with foliage that doesn't look perfect all year.

So... I ordered a few. Just a few. Okay, I ordered a dozen. But no more... except Kelly promised to throw in a few extras... Better start digging new beds for them all to live in!