Laughing Ravens

Ever since I started growing Siberian irises, I have been captivated by the range and intensity of colors possible within the group. There are so many wild, rich, saturated colors available right now. (Ironically, there are fewer and fewer places to buy or even see, Siberian irises, but that is a topic for another post).  Seedling from seed donated by Marty Schafer and Jan Sacks. But it wasn't always this way. In fact, this is a very recent occurrence.  So how did we get here? All the way up into the early 1090's, Siberian irises came in various shades of white, purple, lilac, blue-ish, and (after 'Butter and Sugar' was introduced in 1976) even yellows. Everything changed rapidly after the introduction of a few key irises.  It can't be overstated how one iris introduction (every few decades) can cause dramatic changes for the possibilities of color and form. In 1957 'White Swirl' was introduced by Cassebeer. Now, virtually every Siberian iris in commerce tod...

 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...