HANDY INFORMATION 
CHOOSING VARIETIES FOR GARDEN PICTURES 
Iris varieties should be chosen not only for their individual ap- 
peal, but also for their usefulness in creating pleasing garden 
pictures. This, of course, is largely a matter of providing the 
proper arrangement of the varieties in your Iris plantings. Cre- 
ative designing of garden pictures is a fascinating art that we 
feel deserves as much attention on the part of flower lovers as 
the already popular study of flower arrangement indoors. In 
planning your planting for striking outdoor effects, three factors 
are of prime importance: color, season of bloom, and height of 
flower stalks. To ignore any of these is to invite disappointment. 
In order to make it easy for you to consider these points when 
you are ordering and making your plans, we have broken sharply 
from the customary alphabetical catalog arrangement, and offer 
for your guidance the only Iris catalog arranged by color, season 
and height, and fully indexed. The preparation of the material 
in this new form has revealed to us many similarities and dif- 
ferences that even we had not before realized. If you like the 
idea, and find the arrangement helpful, there is a way in which 
you can most easily show your appreciation of our efforts to help 
you. See bottom of order blank. The more people who utilize 
our catalog, the more useful features we can add in future 
years to help you. Let’s help each other! 
CHOOSING VARIETIES FOR MASS PLANTINGS 
The landscaping of estates and country home sites calls for the 
use of larger masses of fewer varieties. Wherever the plantings 
are viewed from a distance, the older standard sorts, now avail- 
able in quantity, are quite satisfactory. Smaller groupings of 
choice varieties are very effective at accessible points, for close 
inspection. We are glad to furnish personal landscaping sug- 
gestions to those contemplating large Iris plantings. 
ARRANGEMENT OF CATALOG. Our offerings in tall bearded 
Iris are presented in the 28 RAINBOW COLOR CLASSES shown 
in the rainbow at the beginning of the Iris listings. Each color 
class is subdivided into EARLY, MIDSEASON and LATE groups, 
insofar as such varieties are available. In the EARLY class the 
Very Early ones (VE) come first, then the Early ones (E) and 
finally the Early Midseason varieties (EM). Then comes the 
MIDSEASON class (M), and last the LATE class, with Midseason 
Lates (ML) first and Very Lates (VL) last. Whenever the season 
is exactly the same (as ML) for several varieties, they are ar- 
ranged with the tallest first, and the shortest last. For every 
variety we show who originated it and when it was introduced. 
Following this are the above-mentioned abbreviations showing 
the season of bloom, and then the height in inches. 
*—=One of our 4] mew listings of tall bearded Iris for 1947. 
Many more next year! 
AWARDS. To help its members to know which of the newest 
Iris are best, the American Iris Society makes regular separations 
of ‘’the wheat from the chaff’’, and we note in our descriptions 
the varieties to which this Society has recently given its awards. 
The annual DYKES MEDAL represents the pinnacle of Iris fame, 
and only slightly below this are the AWARDS OF MERIT, and 
next, those receiving HONORABLE MENTION. 
CHOOSING VARIETIES FOR HYBRIDIZATION 
Select as parents for your own hybridization experiments the 
newest varieties you can afford, as it is folly not to start where 
recent breeders left off, and thus to take advantage of the ma- 
terial improvements made in the last few years in color, size, 
form, substance, branching, etc. Our listings arranged by color 
and season will help you choose varieties that bloom reasonably 
close together, as fresh pollen is better than stored pollen. You 
will also wish to read the following paragraph on chromosomes 
and to note the chromosome number, in our descriptions, for all 
of the varieties that you plan to cross. Also, see the special 
section for hybridizers, page 23. 
CHROMOSOME NUMBERS. Chromcsomes constitute the phys- 
ical basis of heredity and the transmission of characteristics, 
desirable and otherwise, from one generation to the next. The 
number of chromosomes varies greatly, and is of significance to 
both Iris lovers and the hybridizers. Most of the older varieties 
of Tall Bearded Garden Iris have 24 chromosomes, the standard 
number, and hence are diploids. The majority of the newer and 
better varieties have 48 chromosomes (or approximately this 
number) and are called tetraploids. These characteristically 
have larger flowers, better substance, and greater vigor of growth. 
Nearly all Symposium Iris are tetraploids. A few Iris varieties 
have 36 chromosomes, and are known as triploids—and a very 
few have 60 chromosomes and are called pentaploids. Your 
chances of securing a successful cross will be greatly increased 
if you select as parents varieties having the same chromosome 
numbers, and preferably ones that are not triploids nor penta- 
ploids. In crossing diploids, typical Mendelian ratios may occur 
in the offspring, but when working with tetraploids it will be 
found that the frequencies for the segreation and recombination 
of characters are very different. In order to provide an ever- 
handy source of chromosomal information for hybridizers we are 
this year giving the chromosome number at the end of the de- 
scription of each kind, insofar as this is known. (Shown for 72 
varieties and 4 species.) Our information on chromosome num- 
bers has been gleaned from various published and unpublished 
records, the most important being a list by Dr. L. F. Randolph 
in the November, 1944, Bulletin of the American Iris Society, 
and an article by F. C. Stern in the English Iris Yearbook. 
SYMPOSIUM OF THE 100 BEST IRIS. To aid you in recognizing 
the outstanding varieties, we have analyzed the Judges SYM- 
POSIUMS of the American Iris Society. These are conducted 
annually by Kenneth D. Smith, and show the 100 best Iris that 
have been distributed sufficiently to be generally available for 
the Judges to see. To date there have been 7 SYMPOSIUMS. In 
each color class we have pointed out those varieties, if any, that 
have won a place in 3 or more SYMPOSIUMS, or that are so new 
that they have appeared in the SYMPOSIUM only during the 
last year or two. We think you know the demand for SYMPOSIUM 
varieties, and what you will have to do if you hope to get some. 
MOST POPULAR IRIS OF RECENT ORIGIN 
Here you can see at a glance which have been the most popular new Iris during the past 7 years. 
outstanding that Iris lovers everywhere are now adding them to their collections. 
These varieties are so 
We know you will be delighted to learn 
that we have sufficient stock of most of these beauties so that the prices are surprisingly Tow. The index will show you where 
to find full descriptions. 




HIGHEST RANKING SYMPOSIUM VARIETIES 

| 
DYKES MEDAL YEAR (Every Year Since the First Symposium) 
Te earn Sion FIRST "SECOND THIRD 
No Award* 1946 Great Lakes Ola Kala Elmohr 
Elmohr 1945 Great Lakes Elmohr Daybreak 
Spun Gold 1944 Great Lakes Prairie Sunset Spun Gold 
Prairie Sunset 1943 Great Lakes Wabash Prairie Sunset 
Great Lakes 1942 Wabash City of Lincoln Great Lakes 
The Red Douglas 1941 Wabash Amigo China Maid 
Wabash 1940 Wabash City of Lincoln China Maid 
2d 
* Daybreak and Ola Kala tied for the Dykes Medal in 1946; no award made. 
“The well-informed breeder will insist on knowing the chromosome numbers of the species and forms with which he must work.” 
E. B. BABCOCK, Professor of Genetics, University of California. 
