Jean Witt
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.....The picture of Honorabile
in the January AIS Bulletin .prompts
me to submit some notes on our experiences with it in the miniature
tall bearded breeding program. This venerable Lémon variegata
of 1840, familiar to anyone who ever walked in a small town cemetery
on Memorial Day, appears to be setting some sort of record for
the number of bud sports that it produces. Since 1950, when we
began looking for MTB-sized varieties among the diploid irises
of yesterday, we have found at least a dozen changes of flower
color - some of long standing, others recent.
.....The two best-known sports of
Honorabile are Kaleidoscope and Joseph's Coat, which were introduced
in 1929 and 1930 by A. B. Katkamier, a Macedon, NY nurseryman.
Whether they originated in his garden or elsewhere is not known.
Though listed in the 1939 AIS Check List as being the same, they
are actually quite different. In Joseph's Coat the carotinoid
[yellow] pigments are erratic, while the anthocyanin [responsible
for scarlet, crimson, mauve, violet and blue color] remains unchanged;
the result is a patchwork of ivory-and-yellow in the standards,
and raspberry and red-brown in the falls. In Kaleidoscope, the
anthocyanin is erratic, and the yellow unchanged: the falls are
irregularly splashed with patches of reddish plicata dotting.
These two varieties were included in our earliest MTB lists, along
with Honorabile itself and another small variegata, Sans Souci,
which Alice White had been using as an MTB parent. Of Sans Souci,
the 1939 Check List says "mixed with Honorabile," and
under Honorabile, "mixed with Sans Souci, but distinctly
lighter." Little did the compilers of the Check List realize
the extent of the mixing!
.....A fifth member of the group
was discovered in 1956 when the little yellow MTB Sherwin-Wright
in my garden suddenly developed some anthocyanin on its falls
[See Sherwin Wright with carotene breaks. Webmaster ] and flowers
on one stalk reverted to an exact replica of Honorabile. As we
discussed this phenomenon in our MTB robins the suggestion was
made that Sherwin-Wright must have been a sport of Honorabile
in the first place, since upon close examination the plants were
identical in all respects except flower color. It seemed a rather
daring idea at the time, but we have since found that Honorabile
tends to show a few yellow sectors on its flowers nearly every
year, and two additional complete yellows have been reported.
One of these is almost identical with Sherwin-Wright, but has
additional brown plicata dotting around the beard. Moreover, crosses
with Sherwin-Wright give many seedlings with dark falls - as if
Honorabile had been used instead; the same is true of Kaleidoscope.
Both Sherwin-Wright and Honorabile are plicata carriers. They
are also very poor seed setters.
.....In order to be sure that my
plants of Honorabile were correct, I obtained material from Presby
Memorial Garden. The first year that the Presby plant bloomed,
the terminal flower showed far less anthocyanin than those that
followed. No wonder the Check List says that Honorabile and Sans
Souci are mixed! Which one, then, is the original? A plant of
Honorabile from Dr. Milan Blazek in Czechoslovakia, which bloomed
in 1968, was definitely the darker type - which may mean that
the Check List is wrong about Honorabile's being the lighter and
brighter one, but this point is far from being resolved. Sand,
in Cornell Bulletin #100, said of Honorabile, "The
color in the falls is less intense and solid some seasons, while
in others it is so dense that it becomes almost velvety."
.....We passed the word in our MTB
robins for our people to watch for additional sporting in any
of these varieties, and asked the members of the Historical Robins
to examine their antiques critically for possible additions to
the group. The diagram summarizes the changes that have been reported.
.....It is not yet certain whether
some of these are single-season accidents, or whether they have
affected entire rhizomes and can be propagated. We have been able
to take pictures of several of them, for a permanent record. The
amoena, for instance would be a useful tool in MTB breeding; but
it can hardly be given a name, for there is almost certainly among
the old diploids a previous occurrence of this particular sport
that already has a name. We hope, in time, to find it -- and who
knows what else?
.....The old yellow plicata Montezuma
(Farr 1909) is our sole suspect so far; plants of this variety
that I obtained from Presby Gardens to check out as possible MTB
bloomed last summer as more Honorabile. This could be just a mistake
of course, but knowing how hard they work at Presby to keep things
straight, it is at least worth while to ask the question: could
Montezuma be yet another sport of Honorabile? It is variously
described as yellow, veined and dotted brown, with white around
the beard. Unless we can locate a Montezuma that fits this description
we won't be able to solve this one. Does anyone still grow such
a plant?
.....Surely Honorabile, a plant that
is able to undergo reversible changes in both its anthocyanin
and its carotinoid pigments, and which can run the gamut of iris
patterns from variegata to plicata to self, must have more significance
in the study of iris inheritance than has heretofore been realized.
.....This penchant for erratic change
in flower color is widespread at diploid level -- Extempore, Mildred Presby,
Ice Fairy, Fro,
Loreley,
Her Majesty, Clara Noyes, and many others show it in varying degrees;
in the last three it is often associated with changes in flower
form: flattie shape, 4-merous flowers, flowers with 5-falls-and-1-standard,
etc. Seedlings of Mildred Presby inherit the problem.
.....Certain diploid whites appear
to be unstable. White Queen's flowers show little blue squares
or wedges nearly every year, as do those of La Neige. In some
seasons La Neige
has an obvious blue wash through the "spot" area. In
1970 my clump of White Queen had one flower with a large yellow
sector. Some whites apparently pass this unstable trait on to
their seedlings: I have an erratic blue-splotched white that I
call "Measles of Daystar" from Daystar X Hussard. Fred
Megson has eight such plants from La Neige. This is the same type
of disturbance for which I discarded the 4n yellow Jasmania twenty-five
years ago.
.....Tiffany is the only tetraploid variety to
come to my attention which has left a comparable trail of erratic
descendents: Strawberry Ice (Kent 1956), white splashed red, ((Crystal Beauty
x Tiffany sdlg) X (Tiffany x Crystal Beauty sdlg)); Speckled Bird
(Crandall 1957), erratic plicata, (Tiffany X Capitola); Tensleep (K. Moore 1952), plicata,
no two flowers marked alike, (Tiffany X Cinnamon Bear); Daffy
(DeForest 1943), splashed plicata, (Adelanto X Tiffany); Crazy
Quilt (Vallette 1954), an erratic yellow-ground plicata, also
traces to Sass lines through its parents Ruth Pollock and Peachblow (Royal Coach X
Orloff), though not specifically to Tiffany. Even if we delete
Speckled Bird because of its onco blood, Tiffany still seems to
have produced more than its share of erratics. There are conspicuous
gaps in the history of the Sass plicatas as given by Agnes Whiting
in the AIS Bulletin issue of July 1947, but some of them are said
to trace back to Honorabile and others to Her Majesty. Perhaps
the origin of Tiffany's unstable children is no great mystery
after all.
.....NOTE: This was originally published
in The Medianite, Vol. 12, #4, October 1971. Our (HIPS) people
need to know that diploid antiques are not completely stable,
although I don't know of very many that are as active as Honorabile.
Jean Witt.
Update
[ROOTS Editor: Joseph's Coat, although recognized by Katkamier
in 1930, was never registered as such. However, it was widely
distributed and is listed as an historic iris by many of us. The
1939 Check List .says it is
"synonomous with Kaleidoscope." In view of this, the
1989 R and I lists:
.....Joseph's Coat Katkamier (A.
Katkamier by E. Tankesley Clarke, R. 1989)...Sport of Honorabile.
See Adamgrove 1990 Catalog for more detailed explanation.]
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