TODAY IN THE GARDEN

With 'Busy Being Blue' leading the way, the other early blooming bearded irises are starting to ramp up.

Today saw first bloom on an old iris seedling of mine (the only one that I kept from the only year that I ever (previous to this year) made iris crosses). The seedling was from an old cross of 'Busy Being Blue' and 'Second Fiddle'; I believe that 'Busy Being Blue' was the pod parent for this particular seedling. (I made the cross both ways and in the confusion of landscaping and tags falling out, it is possible that seedlings got confused, but I lean towards BBB as the mother.)

As befitting a scion of 'Busy Being Blue', this seedling has always had First Flower Open (FFO) shortly after 'Busy Being Blue'. The bloom is nothing special or fancy (by modern iris standards), but I like the color on this seedling, and I feel a little sentimental about it because it is "mine". (The color pattern is called "neglecta", which is where the basic color of the iris is blue or purple, but the overall bloom is a bitone, with the standards having the lighter color.)

Bloom on my old neglecta seedling from 'Busy Being Blue' x 'Second Fiddle'

The real excitement of the day came with my first view of blooms on two "new" (in the sense that they were acquired last summer) irises.

The first of these was FFO on the violet blue TB iris 'Autumn Thunder'. (Coincidentally, 'Autumn Thunder' was one of the entries at our recent iris show, so I therefore had a preview, of sorts, of the bloom.)

First Flower Open on 'Autumn Thunder'

The name take a little explaining. All bearded irises are basically spring blooming plants, so why the "Autumn"? The answer, basically, is because it reblooms (at least in some climate zones) in autumn. Some number of bearded irises rebloom (or else repeat bloom, which I gather is subtly different), thanks to an accumulation of certain recessive mutations. Reblooming irises are still a minority among new iris introductions (more's the pity), but some irisarians feel that they are the wave of the future. And hybridizers, if they get a reblooming iris which is worthy of introduction, will often bestow a name on the iris which suggests or signals the reblooming trait. Thus there are a plethora of bearded irises bearing the word "Autumn" somewhere in their name; I have 'Autumn Circus', 'Autumn Ivory', 'Autumn Rain', and 'Autumn Thunder'. Other words that are suggestive of rebloom may also appear in the names of such irises, such as 'Immortality','Golden Immortal', and 'Again and Again'.

Rebloom is dependent upon certain conditions. Most reblooming irises will rebloom after a rest, at some time later in the year, typically autumn, when garden conditions are similar to, or mimic those, when the iris first blooms in the spring. What conditions are those? I'm unclear on that, but it seems to be a matter of soil temperature and/or daylight hours, and even the growing zone (not all reblooming bearded irises rebloom in all climate zones; some are "warm weather" rebloomers only). But that's true only for some reblooming bearded irises. Others may more correctly be called repeating irises, and their repeat bloom cycle(s) is/are not limited to autumn. (I'm a little hazy on all of this, but that's my understanding.) Unlike the spring-only bloomers, the reblooming irises require summer water and fertilizer in order to do their thing.

So right now, 'Autumn Thunder' is in its spring bloom. According to the hybridizer's website, it should rebloom in USDA Zones 6 and above, and reliably give two cycles of rebloom. Since my other irises (thus far) are only sporadically blooming in spring (not all rhizomes are producing bloom stalks), we'll have to wait and see how this iris does (particularly since it is in a shady part of the Back 40).

But I do like the color. (And since I hope to make certain iris crosses this season, presuming those irises bloom, I took the opportunity to "practice" making crosses, by doing a reciprocal cross between 'Autumn Thunder' and my seedling. Iris reproductive parts are, compared to daylilies, bizarre, so practice will hopefully make perfect.)

Elsewhere in the garden, I saw bloom (maybe not the FFO) on the Standard Dwarf Bearded (SDB) iris 'Blue Oasis'. SDBs are the midgets of the bearded iris world, having smaller blooms on stalk heights ranging from 8 to 16 inches. Many of them are rebloomers, and many of them have gorgeous color patterns that are not seen elsewhere in the larger flowered, taller bearded irises.

A charming little bloom on the Standard Dwarf Bearded iris 'Blue Oasis'

If memory serves, I got 'Blue Oasis' at the iris club's picnic last summer. I put it in a pot, and here it is, and it has a nice little bloom, with a nice color pattern.

But that's the problem.... it is little. There is no good place for it here, in the garden; it will get swallowed up by larger plants, or otherwise be unnoticeable. If I keep it, I will most likely have to keep it in a pot.

I'm not sure that it's worth it. (And that goes for (at least some of) the other SDBs and non-TB bearded irises which I somehow acquired last summer. (Some I was stupid enough to buy; others were "gift" plants.))

Finally, I had to go back and revisit my Pacifica. Some detritus had fallen into the bloom (which I didn't notice until long after the fact), but the bloom was still there, brightly shining in the sunlight.

 

A little dirty and the worse for wear, bloom and buds on Pacific Coast Iris 'Canyon Sunshine', in the sunlight

 

 

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