April 19, 2020
We’re Beginning Our “Crosses” , Matilija Bob
We’re Beginning Our Pacific Coast Iris Crosses, Matilija Bob
We’re beginning our pacific coast iris crosses. Creating new crosses depends on various goals for our new flowers. By crossing early bloomers with some of the others you hope to get a bigger range of the early flowering irises, one goal. We also want to get taller, bigger, better…etc. To get taller you start with the tallest. An older hybrid of ours, ‘Bonnie’ has it’s flowers at the top of 18″ flower stalks. That’s about 6″ taller than most of this type of iris and it’s easier to see from a distance.
Our newer hybrids have much bigger flowers and need to have a cross parent with really strong flower stalks to hold up them up. ‘Bonnie’ does have really strong flower stalks and very shinny wide green leaves. 
While the stalks are really strong and very tall the flowers are more “species” like. So, the cross/pollen parents need to have bold colors so the can be easily seen from a distance and really stand out.
This red, is on of our new first time blooms and should really stand out. It also “branches”, meaning there is a secondary flower stem off the main stem that will flower. While the flowering stalk on this new red iris is not quite as tall but at 16″, it’s also tall.
A second set of crosses was with ‘Ocean Blue’ as the pollen parent. ‘Ocean Blue’ is a big award winner for obvious reason. The offspring from this cross should/could stand out on a tall stem as well.
Again, the intent of all this is to have pacific coast irises that really stand out one very tall stems.
We’ll know in two years.
