Blog 2: Historic Irises / Iris Germanica / 'Gudrun'

So today I'm going to start an ongoing blog for Irises.  The flower, not the eyeball.  Iris is a family name.  The maternal matriarch of my family, who left us twenty years ago, was Iris Adelaide White.  That middle name was passed on to nobody.  I can hardly spell it, and I'm only half sure I spelled it correctly.  That first name, however, was passed on to my sister, Jessica Iris.  I hope someday it will be passed on to others in our family.  So, short story long, that explains the start of my interest in Iris flowers.  Iris Adelaide married a German fellow (my grandfather), so it suits me well to collect Iris Germanica in particular.  Bearded Iris.  I love the modern Irises, but I'm also particularly fond of historic Irises.  Historic Irises, in a nutshell, are basically the ones that were discovered, or hybrids that were registered, prior to 1984.  They tend to have less bells and whistles and they're sometimes less frilly and less showy.  However, if my love for Irises stemmed from my love for an ancestor long gone from this world, then I'd like to preserve the historic Irises.  Many have already been lost, many of them it's anybody's guess if they exist somewhere unknown to the collectors and experts, and many of them are in danger of this happening.  Those showy, frilly Irises with all the bells and whistles are descendants of these historic Irises.  Respect is deserved.  So I collect both the historic and the moderns. 

I'm starting a new board on my new Pinterest for Irises.  Two boards:  one for the Irises I already have, and one to serve as a wishlist where I can keep up with the Irises I've fallen in love with but don't yet have.  Both historics and moderns together; I'll not discriminate.  Each Iris will have it's own blog page, with accompanying pictures, so I can have a link for my Pinterest boards.

The yard I "inherited" already had a few Iris in the landscaping, but I didn't know the names for them.  I enlisted the help of HIPS (Historic Iris Preservation Society) in identifying what I already had, and the first one they helped me identify turned out to be a little jewel named 'Gudrun'.  So this will be the first one I blog about.  I'm going to copy and paste the information found on the HIPS website (http://www.hips-roots.com/) for Gudrun below:

"Gudrun K. Dykes, 1931 TB 32" EM WW, From Schreiners Iris catalog for 1946: "One of the finest whites for foreground planting. A very large variety with shapely blooms of splendid texture. A warm white despite its snowy coloring due in part to the warm golden beard and haft marking, and in part to gold dust sprinklings throughout the flower. Price .35" From the Robert Wayman catalog for 1940: "A top notch white Iris among so many fine new white ones and by many judges considered the finest iris of all. It is a massive flower of purest snow white, undoubtedly the largest and most massive. .35"

© LM

AM 1936, British Dykes Medal 1931 Note: Gudrun is the name of a princess in various medieval Germanic sagas. " Gudrun is, so far, the shortest Iris I have so it always gets planted in the front.  Being short doesn't deter this little sweetheart from showing off.  She always blooms huge and she never fails to show off for me.  I haven't gotten this same report from everyone who grows it, but in my yard this has been true year after year.  I like the way it grows in circle-clumps and it always has lots and lots of blooms in a clump, so this one's very photogenic.  Below you'll find a few pics of my own, from my collection: