Iris Reversion

Has anyone experienced large bearded Iris reverting to dwarves with purple flowers? It's bizarre...I've got a fair collection of colours but several clumps each year turn into these little purple blighters! I've never bought a dwarf purple in my life. Either the fancy named varieties aren't stable (something the nurseries keep very quiet about) or, just maybe, it's because I wander round snapping off spent flowers and leave them on the border so they may be seedlings? I find the second theory hard to believe, as wouldn't have thought that viable seeds would have formed before the pods dissolve.
If anyone would like several kilograms of rhizomes, please do let me know

 

Do you have any "before and after" photos?

I have the variegated form of I.japonica which I keep hoping will revert, but no luck so far.............

 

Have got some photos of what they started off as, but the petit purple peskies are finished. They're very early flowerers! I've had the same problem in the past with oriental poppies...they reverted to the standard scarlet. A nurserywoman told me that they must be seedlings, but as I dead-head most flowers regularly, I'm sceptical!

 

This is one of the early blooming Iris's as I know them...................


I'm not try to teach you to suck eggs or anything....................

 

Hiya Back from Paris......
If only the dwarves were that pretty, longk! My purple blighters are definitely dwarf bearded, or possibly intermediate, so earlier than the biggies
If it's cross-pollination, Armandii, that suggests that these interlopers are the result of seeding, yes?
The latest puzzle is that what started out as 'Champagne Elegance' with cream standards and apricot falls is now largely a bluish white on the standards. And I've got a clump of plain, small-flowered purples that weren't there last year!
Time to write to Cayeux, methinks.....

 

That'll teach me not to be an untidy madam (not the original word, Big Brother is a bit sensitive) when dead-heading

 

or the perfect garden, but yours comes pretty close

 

I am sorry to hear that she isn't I've found over the years that tending a garden is pretty good therapy for most unhappiness. Can only hope that you find comfort in your beautiful creation...

 

No, but "The Well Tempered Garden" by Christopher Lloyd is an excellent read

 

Ahhhh yes....my first serious gardening book. Full of sound advice with caustic wit thrown in!