Queen of the Irises

ProfessorRoush has a favorite iris.  Hand's down, no question about it, a definite favorite.  I grow all colors and types of irises.  I maintain approximately forty different varieties that still survive my neglectful gardening.  I'm partial to the purples like 'Superstition', so deep they are almost black.  I fancy the bright sky blue irises such as 'Full Tide'.  I love the soft pink refined splendor of 'Beverly Sills'.  But it is bicolored and vivacious 'Edith Wolford' that holds my iris heart.

I fought long and hard to obtain 'Edith Wolford'.  Every year at the local iris sale I would rush to her spot in the alphabet first, only to be beaten to the spot by a purse-swinging senior lady or to find that all the divisions had been sold privately before the public sale.  A friend finally took pity on me and set aside a fan for me.  Or, as a second friend pointed out, I acquired 'Edith Wolford' by cheating.  A gardener can only sustain the bruises from heavy handbags and bony elbows a few times before he must take preemptive action to end the abuses.

'Edith Wolford' was a 1984 introduction by the late Ben Hager,and she has received all the top American Iris Society awards including the Dykes Medal of Honor (1993), the highest award given.  Hager was the owner of Melrose Gardens in California, and he also hybridized the above-mentioned 'Beverly Sills' (1985 Dykes Medal of Honor).   'Edith Wolford' is the perfect contrast of soft yellow standards and gentle blue falls.  Her beard is a brighter yellow, a beacon to the insects who would steal her pollen.  She even occasionally reblooms.  'Edith Wolford', however, does not always photograph well since cameras tend to make the soft blue falls more purple than they really are.  For example, the top picture on this page was taken on my "good" Canon camera, and the picture at the right was taken on my iPhone.  Both are a little purple-tinged, although the top picture does more closely capture the quality of the canary-yellow standards.

I won't entertain negatives in regards to 'Edith Wolford' in my garden since she grows so well here, but to be fair, other gardeners dismiss her as sickly, sparing of her blooms, slow to grow, and prone to rot.  To those who would be her detractors, I will mangle a quote from the The Hunger Games and suggest, "May your odds with irises be never in your favor." 

Volunteer Opening

Another mystery of my garden was revealed last night when a volunteer peony seedling (sapling? stalk? plant?) opened for the first time.  Until I first noticed this little gem in 2012, growing where it shouldn't be, I was unaware that some peonies would self-seed if they weren't deadheaded.  There were 6 or 8 ancient peonies near the orchard where I was raised, and I never noticed any distant seedlings, but perhaps that was because we mowed around each peony and never gave them a chance.  In contrast, my cypress-mulched and partially shaded front garden must be perfect for peony babies, because I've now got three small new peonies where none was planted.

My natural approach of live-and-let-live for self-seeding plants paid off perfectly this time.   This little girl is presumably a self-cross of 'Kansas' or 'Inspector Lavergne', or a cross of the two, since there are several of each in the bed.  Regardless of the parentage, I'm pleased at the almost bright-red coloration, the prominent yellow stamens, and the semi-double form, and I think I'll keep this one around under an appropriate study name such as 'Roush's Red'.  The blue foliage at the top of the picture, if you're wondering, is a blue-green sedum, 'Strawberries and Cream'. 

If you recognize the foliage of a volunteer plant, and it isn't a weed, don't pull it up.  You just never know the gifts you've been given until you, in turn, give them a chance to shine.

 

Predictable Poser

ProfessorRoush has spent the last 3 years puzzling over the provenance of a perfect little rose seedling that I found in the shade of 'Hope for Humanity' late one summer.  Praying that I had a new little self-seeded hybrid of my very own, I transplanted it to a new bed where it would get plenty of sun and I waited for it to bloom.

At the end of a full growing season, in 2012, the rose was about 12 inches tall, and still perfectly healthy, but it did not bloom.  It was obviously winter-hardy and had no blackspot.  It had small foliage of 7 leaflets that roughly resembled a R. spinosissima, but the only two R. spinosissima hybrids I've ever grown were 'Harison's Yellow' and 'Stanwell Perpetual'.  'Stanwell Perpetual' had been grown near the birthing site about 6 years ago, but was long dead.  Could this rose be from a surviving root of that rose?  If it was, then why wasn't it blooming?

I waited another year, believing that even a non-remonant rose would bloom at the start of the 2013 season, but the plant still didn't bloom.  By that time, my theory was that I had a seedling of R. arkansana, the wild rose of the local prairies, and I was kicking myself for thinking it could be anything else.  But R. arkansana's foliage in the nearby prairie looked bigger than my rose, and by the end of last season, the rose was 3 feet tall, with long canes and small short prickles everywhere.  Thankfully, it was still completely free of blackspot.  But what was it?

This week, the mystery was solved for me.  The rose has been blooming with these little pink single-flowered blossoms.  I looked at them, looked over my shoulder at the R. eglanteria (R. rubiginosa) growing in another bed, and I confirmed the identity of my seedling as R. rubiginosa by rubbing a few leaves and releasing that nice green apple scent.  Somehow, (a bird?) Shakespeare's Sweetbriar rose had seeded itself 200 feet away from the bed in which it grew. 

I suppose it could still be a hybrid, but I can't tell my rose from the species at present.  We'll confirm it again when hips form.  Mystery solved, but do I really want another monstrous R. eglanteria near a pathway and short of room?  I think not.  It'll have to be moved. 

New Roses, Bright Future

'South Africa'

As this blog entry is being posted on the evening of 5/19/14, you might just try to picture me out in my garden planting this rose, 'South Africa', because that's where I'm going to be.  Last Thursday, just before Mrs. ProfessorRoush and I left for a three-day weekend trip to visit my son in Colorado, this rose and a few others arrived,  leaving me with the choice of planting new roses out into a predicted two nights of mid-30's temperatures and possible frost, or of placing them on the kitchen table in front of a bright window and hoping they would survive indoors for a few days without me.  Survive indoors, they did.

It's nice when own-root, new roses are already blooming as they arrive, and I was especially excited to see these blooms from 'South Africa', a W. Kordes & Sons floribunda introduced in 2001.  Although the spectacular color of this rose is not in question, everything else about it seems to be up in the air.  The British label it a Floribunda, the American Rose Society calls it a Grandiflora, and it is introduced in South Africa as a Hybrid Tea.  It was introduced by Kordes as 'Golden Beauty', and also carries the registration name of KORberbeni, but I've found other references that say that Kordes et alnever registered the rose.  It won the Gold Standard Rose Trials Gold Standard award in Britain in 2009, and the Golden Price of the City of Glasgow in 2006, so it has a pretty decent following across the pond. 

For the life of me, I can't find anything about why the rose is marketed as 'South Africa' here.  'Golden Beauty' seems intuitive, but there is no explanation that I can find for renaming it as 'South Africa'.  The Kordes & Sons website doesn't even list the rose anymore, on either the German or English versions of the site, and that seems a little odd too.  So, if anyone knows more, please enlighten me.

In the meantime, I've got this one and eight more roses from www.rosesunlimitedownroot.com to plant tonight.  Of the remaining, all are Griffith Buck roses except for 'Edith de Murat', an 1858-era Bourbon.   I couldn't resist another sweet-scented Bourbon.