WHAT IS THIS SIBERIAN?

[SIGNA LOGO]

SPECIES IRIS GROUP OF NORTH AMERICA

WHAT IS THIS SIBERIAN?

-Several Contributors

A small Siberian iris, in both blue-violet and white forms, is a popular and relatively unique plant for landscaping. Yet its identity seems to be uncertain. It is known by a variety of names; perhaps a reader can shed some light on the true identity of this plant.

Michio Cozuca, of Nagoya, Japan, describes the plant in his photograph, above, as being known as I. sanguinea var. pumila. Leaves are 20 cm long, with the height of the flower stem being 25 cm. The white object in the foreground is an ordinary plastic ball-point pen.

Jean Witt, whose husband saw the same plant in England in the late 1960's, believes that I. Sibirica nana alba is pure saguinea, showing no sibirica.

Both sibirica nana and the white form, alba, were registered by Perry in 1940. Whether today's plants are the ones registered may not be determinable; the height is certainly as described.

Molly Price, in her The Iris Book (D. Van Nostrand Company, Ltd., 1966) mentioned that "a true dwarf, not new, has recently arrived from England" and refers to it as `Nana'. She quoted the Melrose catalogue as saying that "no one seems to know exactly what it is, except utterly charming."

Mrs. Price also mentioned that she grew only one dwarf Siberian, the blue-and-white one known variously as `Acuta' and Iris acuta.

SIGNA's own Roy Davidson provided perhaps as complete an answer as possible in response to a reader's question (SIGNA p. 1218) regarding the lack of clarity in the checklists about "Siberica acuta nana": "The name `Acuta' has been applied to various irises at one time or another, apparently for the first time by Willdenow (who was at one time director of Berlin Botanic Garden and producer of the fourth edition of Linnaeus' Species Plantarum). Of course, since he intended to describe a species, no single plant was intended. There is no direct reference as to who recognized the relationship to I. sibirica although Krelage gets credit for this first such catalog listing, the date 1876. Reichenbach had illustrated it in color in 1847 along with another, I. maritima Miller 1768; Dykes (1913) included both within I. sibirica. There seems to be no record of the original inclusion of `Nana' here although the checklist indicates that ACUTA applied to a dwarf growing plant and that it had been cataloged in France since 1839, in Britain since 1854. That it was in the experiment station collection at Ottawa by 1908 and available in this country from Farr in 1912, whether or not a single clone. Perry cataloged a clone as `Siberica nana' and a white counterpart as `Siberica nana alba,' both in 1940. What goes by this latter designation does seem to be uniform. It may have been brought to us here originally by Geisers of Kansas who imported a good many irises from abroad."

Waddick and Zhao's Iris of China gives a range of 20-60 cm for the leaves of I. sanguinea, and cites a white form (I. albiflora) as being native both to China and Japan, but does not give different size specifications for the white form. Perhaps Prof. Zhao has observed the dwarf form in the wild and knows its origin?

Clearly this plant deserves its own name, and preferably only one name. Should any readers be able to provide additional insight into this, results will be published in a future issue of SIGNA.

Reprinted by permission from SIGNA Newsletter, number 49