Laughing Ravens

 I have been struggling to figure out how to begin this. What is a long cross? Who cares about weird inter-species cross breeding of irises? Why do I care? And what does this have to do with a TET talk?  Five years ago, when we restarted the garden, I stumbled onto the local rock garden group (NARGS is the national org)... and folks quickly pointed me in the direction of the annual seed exchange . It didnt take five minutes on the SeedEx page before I was lost like a kid in a candy store. I mean, read through the list! It's exhaustive! And someone collected those seeds and donated them to the SeedEx.  Seeds are magical. Every bit of hope and wonder are encapsulated in every single seed. When those seeds have even the tiniest pedigree, there's a story. The seeds came from somewhere. Someone grew them, collected them in the wild, shared them from a family member's garden... on and on. There's a story.  I was hooked. The first year I ordered seeds from NARGS, it was pri...

 Two years ago, we planted our first few iris pseudata... starting with 'Yukiyanagi', 'Alabama Blue Fin' and 'Yarai'. All of them grew so much in the last two years that they have needed to be divided and moved. In 2024, we acquired quite a few more, including the ones in the photos below. 'Alabama Blue Fin' might get the grower-of-the-year award after more than doubling in size in less than a season!   So what's the big deal about iris pseudata? For one thing, it is a species cross (sometimes written SPECX) between iris pseudacorus and iris ensata (images below). From this combination you achieve tremendous vigor from the pseudacorus, and you get color variation and richness from the ensata.   'Ause' ( Carol Warner , R. 2014) SPEC-X (pseudata)   One of the most reliable pseudata/pseudacorus parents is 'Gubijin'. Not a true pseudacorus, with an odd chromosome count of 2n=35. However, it is happy to be the pod parent for nearly all ps...