December, 1920 
^lowfcr (Brower 
197 
The American Iris Society. 
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A Letter From Frest. Wister. 
W ITH THIS ISSUE of The Flower 
Grower the first year’s work of the 
American Iris Society is completed 
and it seems a good time to pause 
and reflect upon the conditions which led to 
the formation of this Society, to recount the 
tasks to which we pledged ourselves last 
January and to see in what measure we have 
succeeded or failed in our undertakings. 
The little group which sent out the call for 
the first meeting expected a dozen or twenty 
people to attend and hoped for a member- 
ship of 50 or 100 the first year. When over 
sixty people attended the organization meet- 
ing we saw that we had underestimated the 
Iris enthusiasm in America, and the present 
membership of over 475 shows how very 
greatly we underestimated this enthusiasm 
not only in America but elsewhere, for we 
have members also in Canada, England, 
France, Holland and New Zealand. 
This large membership has made it possible 
for us to accomplish more in our first year 
than is usually expected of a new society. Our 
members, I believe, have appreciated Mr. 
Sturtevant’s fine notes each month in The 
Flower Grower, the Culture Bulletin and 
the various Iris shows held in different parts 
of the country. Some of them have made 
use of our Official Data Card and Card of 
Definitions. This is all that the average 
member has received from the Society, and 
nearly all the members that I have met 
recently appear to be satisfied. We have 
been remarkably successful in getting mem- 
bers, but if we do not satisfy you, and you do 
not care to continue your membership next 
year we shall have failed. 
Most of you, however, do not realize the 
work that has been carried on by the com- 
mittees and officers behind the scenes. They 
have laid the foundation for work which, in 
the future, will be of great benefit to both the 
Society and the individual members. Realiz- 
ing that nothing of permanent value can be 
done until nomenclature can be straight- 
ened out, work towards this end was begun 
even before the Society was formed, and the 
first step in this is the compiling of a check 
list giving all species and varieties ever in- 
troduced into commerce, with name of origi- 
nator, dates of introduction, with catalogue 
or other published description and reference. 
To this end the largest catalogue collection 
in America, that of the Massachusetts Horti- 
cultural Society, which dates back to 1790, 
has been searched as well as the fine cata- 
logue collections at the Department of Agri- 
culture in Washington and at Cornell Uni- 
versity. We have also searched the files of 
all important gardening publications in 
America, England, France and Germany, and 
following this came a very detailed corres- 
pondence with experts all over the world for 
corroboration and amplification of the data 
secured. In all possible cases the originators 
have checked spellings and dates of their va- 
rieties, and among those who have helped us 
the most are Mr. Farr, Mr. Fryer, Miss Stur- 
tevant, Mrs. McKinney, Mrs. Cleveland, Mrs. 
Dean, Mr. Jackson, Mr. Hendrickson, Mr. 
Koehler, Mr. Peterson and Mr. Bonnewitz in 
this country. In England we have had much 
help from Mr. Barr, Mr. Wallace, Mr. Bliss, 
Mr. Dykes, Sir. Arthur Hort, Mr. Perry, Mr. 
Reuthe and Mr. Bunyard. In France fromM. 
Denis, M. Mottet, M. Millet, M. Dessert and 
M. Chenault, and in Holland from M. Kre- 
lage and C. G. van Tubergen, Jr. It is very 
gratifying to note how willingly all these 
experts have helped us, for this check list is 
absolutely necessary for a foundation for 
further investigation, although it is not and 
never will be an interesting document except 
to students and those particularly interested 
in nomenclature. We hope this will be pub- 
lished during the coming year through the 
help of Cornell University. 
The chief test garden at the Botanical 
Gardens, Bronx Park, New York City, is 
already well under way. The 300 or so vari 
eties comprising their old collection have 
been transplanted and over 300 additional 
varieties have been added through the gen- 
erosity of our members. This garden should 
be a beautiful sight in the spring of 1922, at 
which time we hope our annual meeting may 
be held in New York so that we can all visit 
it. 
We have also co-operated by supplying 
several hundred plants of bearded Iris to 
the Cornell Test Garden and a smaller num- 
ber of Japanese Iris to the Brooklyn Botanic 
Garden for special study, and we have had 
requests for help from several other gardens, 
to which I hope we will be able to supply 
some plants next year, for these show gar- 
dens are absolutely necessary for our work in 
the future of publishing standard descrip- 
tions of Iris varieties. 
Based on the check list we have begun the 
work of registration of new varieties from 
month to month in The Flower Grower 
and we have also begun to compile the his- 
tory of Iris breeders and Iris growers in vari- 
ous parts of the world, many of our most 
prominent growers having consented to write 
of their work for us, and we have at hand 
already a 7,000 word article concerning Sir 
Michael Foster and his work which we hope 
to publish in bulletin form during the com- 
ing year if our funds will permit. 
We have made but little progress towards 
a library of books, magazine articles, photo- 
graphs and lantern slides and the need of such 
a library has lately been emphasized again by 
requests which have come in from various 
sources. I hope another year may show pro- 
gress in this direction 
It has been my privilege this fall to meet 
many of our members in the Central West 
and to talk over with them our work and 
ask their advice, their criticism and their 
desires for the future. I have found that 
nearly all of them want a bulletin about vari- 
eties before they want anything else and we 
shall endeavor to publish such a bulletin as 
soon as possible. I wish that more members 
would take the trouble to write to the Secre- 
tary or myself expressing their views, for we 
cannot do our part in giving our members 
what they desire unless they do their part in 
letting us know what they want. 
I have met this fall a large number of per- 
sons interested in Irises, so many in fact that 
I do not see why our membership cannot be 
doubled in the future if our members do 
their part in telling their friends about us. 
The work that we can do of course will de- 
pend upon the number of members that we 
have. 
We have met from our treasury this year 
some unusual expenses co incident with the 
formation of the Society and we are finishing 
the year with a fair surplus in bank, as well 
as with $700 invested in Liberty Bonds from 
life memberships, from which we can use 
only the interest. 
While I am not in a position to promise 
what we can do within the next year, I very 
much hope that we will be able to publish 
two or more bulletins, to offer more prizes at 
various flower shows and to make ourselves 
more useful to our members than we have 
during our first year when our time was so 
much taken up with organization matters. 
John C. Wister, 
President. 
COMMENTS BY SEC’Y STURTEVANT. 
1 wish to add a few words to Mr. Wister's 
review of our brief past and to call yet again 
to your attention some of the ways in which 
each of you may further the interests of our 
Society. 
All members should have received the Bul- 
letin on Culture, and begin their subscriptions 
with the May issue of The Flower Grower. 
whether they joined in June or in October. 
To the Charter members we were able to 
send the earlier numbers and, through the 
courtesy of the Peony Society, their Bulletin 
dedicated to the American Iris Society. The 
Official Data Cards are, of course, at your dis 
posal. Our exhibitions have been open to the 
flower-loving public. We hope that what little 
you may have lost by joining us late in the year 
you may look upon as a sort of initiation fee, 
and not delay the payment of your dues for 
1921. The Postal regulations demand paid-up 
subscriptions to The Flower Grower and it 
is hardly fair to all our members to send 
issues to those who are dilatory in payment. 
I hope that many of you will take this oppor- 
tunity to let us know your wishes and might 
I suggest that a membership would prove a 
delightful Christmas present to a garden 
friend? If you let us know in time, the Bui 
letin will reach them promptly with your 
card enclosed. 
And now let us see what is before us. Mr. 
Wister has already spoken of the progress 
made upon the check list. We have also de 
scriptions of at least five hundred varieties 
ready for checking in the Trial Ground and 
subsequent publication, and it is quite prob 
able that a classification of garden varieties 
will be accepted. Much material is at hand 
for Bulletins of a general nature. There will 
be one early in the year at any rate and if it 
does not seem desirable to publish a check 
list, symposium, or something of that sort, 
there should be yet another coming. In ad- 
dition there is every prospect of continuing 
our monthly page in The Flower Grower. 
There are two conflicting demands upon 
our finances: our publications and exhibi 
tions. If we can do the last by merely fos- 
tering local Iris shows with the small ex- 
pense that was connected with most of them 
this year, we can do much in the line of pub- 
lication. In other words if Honorary awards, 
medals and stock prizes contributed by our 
members are sufficient, we should be able to 
foster exhibitions in many cities and yet give 
our many members who are far from these 
centers their money’s worth in Bulletins of 
permanent value. 
Exhibitions are of great publicity value, 
but show gardens should prove an even bet- 
ter investment, not only for our Society, but 
for Horticulture in general, and for the devel- 
opment of a community interest in the pleas- 
ures of gardening. I have received a number 
of requests for such help. Iris plantings have 
been well started in Nashville, St. Thomas, 
St. Louis and Columbus, but so few members 
have responded to our appeal for plants for 
our official Trial Grounds that I have been 
able to give but general encouragement to 
these other appeals. Here is a possibility of 
development that depends wholly upon our 
members as individuals. Get your Iris friends 
together even though they are not all mem 
bers ; get in touch with your local park board 
and start an Iris planting near by. If you 
have the real garden and community spirit 
you will even then have a surplus to share 
with others in distant cities and as the years 
go by an Iris planting will be a common fea- 
ture of our parks. It will be a matter of 
years, but is it not a vision worth while ? 
Notice. — The annual dues for 1921 should 
