This year's crosses

If the first question is: Who’s yer daddy?

The next question would have to be: Who’s ya momma?

Plants take a while to tell you what you won on the genetic roulette wheel.

Year one: you get to dab pollen and cross your fingers while crossing your irises.

Year two: seeds might germinate, might grow enough to plant out into dirt, might make it into winter. After that all the mights add up to frozen nights, deep in snow. Maybe just maybe…

Year three: Spring arrives and with it either a lovely gift or not.

Like I said, it takes a while.

This year I have some goals. As with most things, I expect the goals to shift in unexpected ways. Does that make them any less expected?

Hopeful LA iris crosses

These are (in order of appearance) iris brevicaulis, LA iris ‘Brown Recluse and LA Iris ‘Red Echo’. Both Red Echo and Brown Recluse are predominantly iris fulva. From what I have seen so far, they will happily set pods from almost any cross. My hope is to cross these three with some of the other more advanced hybrids to encourage greater vigor and cold hardiness. I also love the more open forms!

possible combinations for creating iris pseudatas (iris pseudacorus, 'Gubijin' SpecX, iris ensata species, iris ensata 'First Act'

In this case, the hope is to create some new iris pseudatas, using both iris pseudacorus as well as SpecX ‘Gubijin’ as the pod parent, with the two early iris ensatas providing pollen.

I hope to take pollen from iris versicolor and cross that with the pseudacorus (and ‘Gubijin’ as well. We have quite a few versicolor irises to work with.

iris versicolor

So what might things look like in five years or so, as a result of some of these potential crosses? Might see some iris pseudatas. Not really sure what the pseudacorus X versicolor will look like.

iris pseudata

Here are a few photos of iris pseudata from Shimizu, illustrating the potential possibilities, if everything goes as planned and the stars align.

Today was the first day I was able to get a good look at how things made it through winter. On the more mature plants, I am seeing the start of new growth. Some of last year’s seedlings are starting to push out new green. I expect, if we get this forecast week of rain, and then a few strong warm days, we should see more growth as we move into April.