What Beardeds are up now? #2

re: Prissy Miss I guess that really is Prissy Miss..lol The Walmart picture had a pink iris pictured on it but when I looked it up Prissy Miss is a bright mauve, ruffled, with an orange beard.

I'm having fun with my dwarfs so far: Urban Star today.

Woo, love that Urban Star. Here's 'Conjuration' with 'Sugar Blues' in back. 'Conjuration' is almost 5 feet tall this year. I do have to stake it, but it's fun to be staring at it straight on.

Only dwarfs here--Conjuration and my other TBs are in waiting...

Mine will be long gone when yours are up Wanda. I bought some PCI's and LA's for next year hoping to extend my season. When you're trying to do color from February to November, it's quite a task. Sometimes a nice blanket of snow seems like a good thing- except for my zone 9 plants that would croak. A few months off from weeds isn't a bad idea either. But then, I've got so much to play with. It's a trade off, that's for sure.

I like to spend winter dreaming & planning and doing my much neglected housework.

What a lovely way to spend the winter. I can just see you sitting by the fire now, sorting through plant 'stuff' with the snow outside and the windows all frosted. It's a pretty picture.

Conjuration is wonderful Doss! I can't imagine one that tall.

Susan

'Conjuration' is an American Iris Society Dykes Medal Winner. That's as good as it gets. This is 'Kevin's Theme'. Another good performer.

The black soaker in the background is to water the Dahlias. The new ones are about 4" high.

all so pretty so little room . DRAT

Right tazzy, how many cultivars do you grow? I'm still trying to cram in more too. I always buy too many. I guess you just have to divide more often. Right? DRAT!! :-)

Dorothie, I just love that combination of 'Conjuration' and 'Sugar Blues'! They are both so pretty together.

Ah, a serendipity. I'm the kind of person who kind of tosses beautiful plants in places and enjoys the result. Sometimes I end up moving stuff around, but I really need to see before I decide if I like it. I'm glad that you do. I'll have to go out tomorrow and enjoy it somemore!

i had over 800 i have cut back do to health and bad case of OLD i haven't counted this year but still around 300 varieties i think .

Tazzy, you've been through a lot of cultivars. What you have left must be fabulous. If you've cut back 500 varieties though, no wonder you're saying DRAT!!!.

Poor Tazzy. She probably shipped them to some poor unsuspecting DGer (Looking hopefully in my mail box???) LOL

Dwarfs are in season here: Bedford Lilac SDB

Sweet Wanda. Those azure blue Iris are amazing.

You know, my Bedford Lilac just keeps blooming & blooming. Gotta love those dwarfs....

http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/502275/

Wanda I hope that sweet little angel watchs over your iris and DLs! Maybe she'll keep old jack frost a way tonight!

Taz, OMG, 800? Hard to imagine, but then 300 iris is hard for me to imagine. I am doing pretty good, though. I have added about 5 (got em from walmart) and then the ones you sent me. Which are by far the best! Can't wait to see if they bloom this year. So far, they do not look like they will. But I have lots of Grandma's iris (I. Germanica) and they are blooming their lil heads off!!! yippeee........

Love your lil sleepy angel, Wanda....

waving hello to everyone....

picture of the Taz...

800!! 300!! what a sight to behold, I can hardly imagine!

here in the land of, ahem, two, count 'em two kinds of iris (formally known as "the purple one" and "the yellow one"), both have bloomed!

I know it's hard (impossible?) to ID an iris from a picture, but any hints, ideas, guesses... welcome! They're likely to be fairly old varieties, but I could be wrong. here's "the yellow one".

p.s. hello doss!!!! :-)

Hi Paani! Welcome back. Your lovely yellow one looks almost pale green. It's stunning.

It is hard for me to imagine a yard big enough for 800 or 300 irises!

"The Purple Iris" is still doing its thing. The flowers smell kind of like root beer. :-)

People seem to equate palm trees with paradise, so here are some more irises in paradise. ;-)

your yellow might be FLAVESCENS 1813
They were brought all over USA vie' wagon trains along with the blue
Gemanica.

tazzy,
thanks - I'm going to look that one up right away. Pretty much anything that went west in a wagon train went through St. Louis, so it sure could be.
It would be nice to know their names (though they're just as beautiful without, I guess we're curious critters...).

btw, have you still got Flavescens 1813 in your garden, or did you just *used* to have it?? (got to be one or the other!! :-)

paani

Its still on hill will ck. tomorrow see if its still blooming So early this year .its about over except for Sib. La and JI IF it is i will take pic, or maybe look in files i think i did take pic ??

there you go here HIPs pic. of Flavescens TB

This message was edited May 3, 2005 11:00 PM

hi doss :-)

The greenish tinge comes from my picture. Maybe I've got too much foliage in the background for a shot of a yellow bloom?? It's really a somewhat darker shade than this picture shows too, I think. I'll try again tomorrow! Any tips? You're iris photos are so good.

tazzy, thanks for checking and pic. if there's a bloom. Seems that Flavescens 1813 is not so common anymore. No flavescens iris in the PF that I could find, and only a few images in a google image search (even leaving out the 1813 part). I didn't find it at Superstition either, but maybe I didn't look in the right category - they've got so many.

doss, here's the purple one (oops, I mean The Purple One™). This particular bloom reminds me of a little girl in pigtails, seen from the back. Do you see it, or am I Quite Mad?? !

panni look above your last post we must have posted
same time there is your pic, above the blue is a species i pallida
should have grape soda smell

This message was edited May 3, 2005 11:26 PM

Paani, Not only does The Purple One (however you make the tm) look like a girl in pigtails, it looks like it has small versions of the white bows the little girls in Russia wear in their hair.

Two secrets to taking photos of Iris. The first is to never take them in sunlight - they just don't come out right. Take them when it is overcast or in the early morning or late afternoon when shadows fall on the flowers.
Then, use your Macro setting on your camera and zoom in. If you don't have a camera that has zoom or a macro setting, I can't tell you what to do except to make the depth of field shallower by lowering the f stop. This also makes the shutter speed faster and it won't blur things so much. Also - I usually don't have to do this on my closeups taken with macro, but if you have a photo editor, sharpen the photo and perhaps the saturation or the brightness. This is usually an easy adjustment. I had photoshop elements fix the color automatically. I have no idea what the real color of your iris is, but this photo has been sharpened and had color and brightness auto adjusted. And now you wonder why some of the photos on websites aren't realistic? Really, the only way I can come up with true colors sometimes, especially on dark iris, is to play with the color and see if I can come up with something similar. The dark ones are always too washed out.

The photos of Iris that I post here are almost all undoctored. Any really dark iris have been edited and then I think that I can't catch that fabulous deep color and texture. I might need a lightbox for that and I'm not buying one this week. Rshadlow seems to be able to capture them pretty well. You might ask him. He does it better and more consistently than anyone I've seen. I should ask him how he does it. He's really good.

This message was edited May 3, 2005 9:56 PM

Paani
here my pic of flavescens taking today

another shot of Flavescens

hello doss and tazzy,

thanks so much for the advice doss. And for bringing out the white hair ribbons!! I just didn't notice them until you sharpened up the pic, and then there they were. (now as I look at iris with long falls (right word?), I keep thinking of Golden Ears!!! Is there an iris with her color!??).

One of the things I like best about PF is that you can see plants in all stages of growth, and not "made up" for the camera (like they are in plant catalogs). But with iris, I think it may often take some tinkering to get a picture that looks like what you see in your garden. They are tricky! Maybe because they're so translucent? (I looked at RShadlow's pics. Beautiful. But I think yours are just as good).

tazzy, thank you *so much* for giving my iris their names back (our postings the other day did "cross in the mail". You posted while I was typing!).
The purple one is pallida for sure. I had noticed the scent, but didn't place it until you said it. Then, bingo.
And now that I see your own flavescens, it sure seems like a perfect match. Would you say that it's a sure thing, or just a maybe, that mine are flavescens? Here's another photo that's somewhat truer to color. Sure looks like yours to me.

There's no PF entry for Flavescens as far as I can see. If you're sure, then maybe I'll make one and we could both add pics to it??

doss,

here's one more photo (last one) of The Purple One™, now I. Pallida. (option key and digit 2 on my keyboard for ™ btw. As in Doss™ :-), Since there are only two kinds of iris in our garden, that's it from here!

As I look (gaze) at all the iris pics, my amateur eye is struck by how much the hybridizers have gone in for frills in recent years. True?
Are there exceptions to that? I'm curious whether there are "new olds", or whatever you would call it, in the iris world??

I have noticed at least one old - I can't remember where I saw it. Someone came out with a new introduction that was "old fashioned". Maybe someone else has seen it?

I love the old dog eared ones to mix in with the clear ruffled new ones. The old ones are stronger & more vigorous.

This is 'Spiced Tiger'. A really lovely Iris with a fairly large bloom and nice substance.

I'm not sure that there is a more colorful Iris than 'Impressionist'. One of my favorites. It's a good time for favorites right now in the garden.

'Social Graces' is as lacy as it appears. What a lovely Iris.