Irises: Does anyone know, 1 by IndaShade

IndaShade wrote:
I cross pollinate and grow bearded irises from seed all the time. It's not that hard, but it IS different than growing daylilies from seed.

In the first place, the Mommy and Daddy parts of an iris are in different locations than a daylily. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I had a moderate amount of trouble finding the stigmatic lip on an iris at first. You will probably need to find a diagram of how to pollinate iris online somewhere. I'm sure I won't be able to explain it the way it needs to be explained. :-)

Bearded iris seeds seem to take FOREVER to ripen. I'm still waiting on pods that I set in mid-May; whereas daylily seeds only take around eight weeks.

Bearded iris seeds also require a period of freeze/thaw to germinate. I plant my seeds out in beds in October/November and they sprout the following spring. Some people plant them in pots and set them in cold frames. Some put them in the freezer. It doesn't matter how you do it, but beardeds do NEED that freeze/thaw time to germinate. Also, some of the seeds will take two years to germinate.

If you cross pretty to pretty in daylilies, you are very likely to get something pretty, or at least something decent to work with. With irises, you never know WHAT you are going to get! The genes seem to "line up" different in iris, if that makes any sense. Even bee pods can yield some pretty fabulous plants. And Aimee is right when she says you must cull them, but some (most!) of my seedling irises are so ugly, that that's not a problem for me.

Most iris seedlings will bloom in a year, but some will take two or more. This is no different than daylily seedlings though.

Just FYI:I do BEARDED iris exclusively-- standard dwarf bearded iris mostly-- I can't tell you the procedure for other types of iris.

This is a picture of a standard dwarf bearded iris that I am going to register and release next year. It is a cross of two blues (Chubby Cheeks x Bedford Lilac), so you can see that hybridizing iris is a crap shoot. But it's just as fun as hybridizing daylilies!