Irises: The first iris bloom is six days early , 1 by Mainer

Mainer wrote:
If you are a HIPS member there is a Identification of noids section and you send the photo of good quality or it will do no good, to the forum and they will try to identify it. Sometimes it is real easy if the noid is something everyone has seen like Lent A Williamson is the most popular TB across the country to be finding as a noid.

Crimson King is another popular older iris found almost everywhere except here in Maine it seems too tender to just grow wild.

Now there are some very hard to tell apart and need a rhizome grown against it to be sure it is the real thing.

Eleanor Roosevelt and Black Magic are very close in looks.

Some may be identical in flower form and color so the only real difference is purple in the leaves or no purple in the leaves. These need to be part of the description when identifying and Mary Hess of Bluebird Haven does try to state GBF or PBF when she lists her irises which helps with the identifying process.

You can say that one is not the real thing, because it has PBF. Snowflurry is having an imposter going round with PBF but Snowflurry which is white has no PBF, it is a GBF, green based fan, no purple at all in it any time of the year.

The purple in the leaves of an iris labeled having PBF can show up before bloom and as the flower happens, fades away in some plants, others it stays all the time like in the irises Elsa Sass or Blue Shimmer.

Purples and whites may be hard to id only with a photo so again a rhizome will need a guess rhizome grown against it to try to id it. If they match, you know what the noid is. If they do not, you guess again and grown another against it and make a list of what it is not and a list of what it might be. Strike off the ones you know it does not match before buying a test rhizome again to grow against it. This can take years and so if it is a pretty historic noid, we label it as a noid and keep the same name to it if we share it until we find out what it really is.

We usually spot an imposter in our Noid Identification Forum area and tell the person owning it to label it differently from the iris id they thought it was or suggest a rhizome to grow against it. I was told in Feb of this year to try Truly Yours to grow against my not Debbie Rairdon to see if they match. Hence my not Debbie Rairdon photo might appear as Truly Yours in the future in the HIPS Photo Gallery should they match.

Should I donate it in a sale it would be labeled as a noid not Debbie Rairdon or the proper thing when we discover what it is because it is a historic of some kind. It seems to be ten years younger than Debbie Rairdon in characteristics so we do not want to sell it as Debbie Rairdon. We do not want a picture of it in the Photo Id Gallery as Debbie Rairdon if it is not the right iris, for others are trying to id their irises.

Now in the noid identifying section of the communications forum for HIPS members is where we hold our debates over what we think each plant is. We show the photo and someone says it is the right iris or not the right iris as we have labeled it. We even discussed the mess up that happened in the HIPS iris sale a couple of years back where we had bought one thing like my Snowflurry and it was something else entirely. When a person donates due to illness or death the family or friends may do the digging and labeling for them and may not know what is what. We have a good time sorting out the mess and are trying to make a better system to sell the iris you intended to buy at the sale. This section if you are not a member, you can not see the pictures that we are talking about. You can see the discussions without the pictures that members are actually seeing.

That was the way it was before any upgrading to the HIPS website happened. What it is like now I have not investigated for I am still not well yet from the flu. Getting better but for a week I dragged myself out and took photos and labeled and went back to bed when I could. Not really been able to garden or weed this week.

Oh yes, like the ID area, the photos in the HIP Gallery give a few for non members to see what it is like but there are many more added that only members get to see.

I tried to bring a few photos of historics to Dave's Garden to help non members a bit in the process of identifying their noids, my pics I can share. What others donate to HIPS Photo Gallery may not be shared without their permission. I noticed quite a few other HIPS members have placed many of their photos in Dave's Garden's Plant Files to help out.

I have only one plant that bloomed today that is new. It is an historic Dykes Medal winner of 1962 called Whole Cloth by Cook, 1958) 30",M,White and medium blue amoena with nearly white beard.

Mine comes from Superstition Iris Gardens so I know it is the real thing even so that description mentions no yellow which is in the beard. The newer descriptions of modern irises try to state the beard color more accurately than they did in the past. A debate could happen around this iris over the beard not matching the description if the ID Chairman did not know Whole Cloth came from Superstion.

Here is a photo of iris looking like it has white beard but it was the angle of the photo.




This message was edited Jun 2, 2009 6:18 PM