Interesting Varieties Of Medium-sized Bearded Irises

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Medium-sized bearded irises - the golden mean

Last year, I spoke on the pages of a magazine about growing tall, bearded irises. These are quite popular plants, I think that several varieties of such irises can be found in almost every garden of flower lovers in Russia.

And now I want to tell you about the class of bearded irises - medium-sized, still unfamiliar to most flower growers.

In order not to burden readers too much with scientific and pseudoscientific terms and abbreviations in English, I will not describe their division in detail. Some iris growers call them according to the generally accepted classification of the American Iris Society - interlude.

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In the Russian society of iris, another name has been fixed - binder medium-sized bearded irises. The common indicator that unites them is the height of the peduncle. It usually varies depending on the variety and ranges from 41 to 70 centimeters. For comparison, I can say that in the most common class of tall bearded irises, the height of the peduncle reaches one meter, and the height of dwarf irises is usually less than 40 centimeters. That is why medium-sized irises in special literature for iris growers are called "the golden mean".

It should be noted that these middle peasants are much ahead of tall bearded irises in vitality. They are distinguished by higher frost resistance, they are more resistant to the scourge of irises - bacteriosis, which usually attacks these plants in the middle of summer and causes significant harm to the most valuable varieties of tall irises.

Often in our capricious St. Petersburg climate, at the very peak of the flowering of tall bearded irises, and this, as a rule, happens in mid-June, when the thermometer exceeds 25 degrees, suddenly a wind blows with rain and inflicts an irreparable blow on the blooming irises. As a result, the flowers swell from moisture, and the peduncle cannot withstand the weight and falls. The most offensive thing is that most often from such rain exactly those plants that should appear before the eyes of judges and visitors to the annual exhibition of irises are affected.

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But for medium-sized irises, this problem does not threaten, because they have already successfully bloomed under the May sun, and if some plants are late with flowering, then they are usually not afraid of gusts of wind, since they have a squat and strong peduncle.

Medium-sized irises are irreplaceable in mixborders, as their overgrown bright clumps stand out brightly against the background of conifers, the host, for which they are very fond of gardeners and lovers of "lazy" gardens.

A bright white-yellow spot that attracts attention, stands out in my garden a curtain of irises of the Protokol variety by the American breeder Keppel, and the medium-sized border iris of the Brown Lasso variety looks great there, the yellow-lilac petals of which are framed by a brown border.

The Vatik variety looks unusual on the flowerbed, on the blue background of the petals of which a fancy pattern of white stripes is applied.

Planted side by side, Country Dance, which has a pink-orange coloration, and Black-Purple Dark Waters create a great contrast of colors. The variety Lyrique (Lyric) of Australian selection looks magnificent and mysterious, against the silvery-blue background of the petals of which a flashy wine-plum stain stands out.

The only weakness of medium-sized irises is the scarcity of varieties, which is explained by the complexity of breeding work with them, because the pollen necessary for breeding new varieties is in most cases fertile, and seed boxes are poorly tied.

But thanks to the painstaking work of not only foreign breeders, but also our domestic iris lovers, more and more decorative varieties of medium-sized irises appear.

In more detail about the agricultural technology of medium-sized irises, I can inform the readers by e-mail. Send your questions by e-mail - e-mail: [email protected] or write to the address; 198205, St. Petersburg, Tallinn highway, 180 Sidorovich Roman Antonovich.