question re New Moon (Sexton 1968)

Among the now "historical iris" we collected in 1976-1979 was New Moon (PlantFiles # 35841). After many years of neglect described in a previous post, I believe our New Moon is now in bloom, but there's one detail that is lacking before I can positively identify it.

Most descriptions for it say that it is fragrant, including at PlantFiles. If our New Moon is indeed in bloom now, it has absolutely no discernible fragrance. So my question is -- can a reportedly fragrant iris bloom without any fragrance?

Other than that one detail, the photographs posted for New Moon by violabird, laurief, and Elizabethtown exactly match the flower now in our garden, especially the photo posted by laurief.

It will be awhile before this roll of film will be completed. When it is, I'll add a photograph of it.

The only other yellow iris we had that matches the color description is Arctic Beacon (Brown 1965), but it is an intermediate, and our flower is too large for an intermediate.

Thoughts anyone?

I've never noticed my new moon being fragrant. Perhaps it's all in the nose of the smeller. My new moon will not bloom this year, so I can't help you with a double check.

Roni

Thank you so much, Roni. Your response is certainly encouraging and inspires my next question.

This one bloomed for us last year and it, too, seems like it is probably New Moon, but it's edges are not nearly as ruffled as New Moon is supposed to be. It was a very big flower on a very short stem, probably because it is in the less sunny end of the iris bed?

So many of our iris are blooming this year, ones that we haven't seen in 10 to 20 years so we are very encouraged that many more of them survived our years of neglect than we could possibly have hoped. My husband is really the iris "expert" and I'm learning. Forty-five years ago he lived next door to a couple whose back yard was one big iris garden and were active in the local iris club. Many of ours came from them and now serve as a sort of memorial to them (he died in 1996 and she in 2004). I'm so glad now that I kept such good records as we collected ours 30+ years ago and know who gave us which ones. Our story also serves as a testimony to the hardiness of most iris.

I honestly do not have much luck in identifying a flower from a picture. This one looks somewhere in 40's maybe, I don't know. Sorry.

Roni

This is really interesting. At least I think so. The first flower to bloom for what I believed was New Moon did not have any discernible fragrance, but the second flower on the same stem does indeed have fragrance, and a very definite one, too, so I'm happy now that one more of our iris again has a name with it.