From a "Shakey Isles" ( New Zealand) Iris grower

[Maggi Young]

I was pleased to hear from Derek Halford in New Zealand- which he calles the Shakey Isles in the light of the seismic activity there.  Derek wrote : ...while I'm not a member of your club I grow both onco and regelia iris here in New Zealand. I also grow and breed arilbred iris. If you are interested I can send you the photos of the flowers from last year 2014 which include species,species hybrids and arilbreds that you can use in the clubs forum should you wish.
Kind regards Derek Halford

Well, that seemed  like a good offer so here we go with  Derek's tale:

Here is a story of how I became involved with the Aril species and Aril breds:
 
'In 2009, I was involved in helping the Aril lady (Pat Toolan), get some Aril hybrid seed into New Zealand, for the Iris Society NZ convention.
 
We had to get the seed passed by Biosecurity Section of Imported Plant Materials (Ministry of Primary Industries). Their rules on imported plants and seed are very strict. So strict, that unless you are part of the NZ Government, wanting to bring in plant material, it is virtually impossible to succeed, unless you are a very wealthy body or persons. Even bringing in seed, they have a rule that unless the seed was here before 1998, even though the plant material may not exist in the country. You cannot bring in new seed, unless you get permission from a body called ERMA (another Government body that has final say on imported plant materials).
 
Such is the fear from Government bodies of bringing diseases into the country, like foot and mouth and the recent importation of the Queensland Fruit Fly into our biggest city Auckland, that a whole suburb of that city was in shutdown, after finding fruit fly. The people were not allowed to move any fruit and vegetables from within this area. Fourteen Queensland Fruit Fly have been found in this suburb. But back to the Aril Iris species, species hybrids and Aril breds.
 
After helping the Aril lady, to get the seed all permitted through Customs, Pat Toolan gave me some of the seed to try and germinate and grow. The rest of the seed was sold at the convention by auction. I joined the Aril International Soceity and brought some species seed, which I have been successful in growing, hence some of the photos. Also I have imported some Regelia seed from a member of the SRG Club. Which I have also got to germinate, grow and flower, they are also of Regelia crosses hence the beard on both standards and falls. I have attached these photos with this email. I also have crossed the Aril breds that I have purchased in 2008 and have included photos of these crosses and the eventual results of my crossing [Sheik X Sheba's Jewel] x [Sheba's Jewel X Ester the Queen], which have given me my Onco Aril breds [see second email with attached Aril photos].
 
At the moment my direction is to try and get as many of the Onco and Regelia species back growing in New Zealand. This is proving difficult due to the limited availability of Aril seed, but so far I have managed 10 species to grow in a country, that most people in the Aril world say that it is not compatible to the successful growing of this wonderful Iris.
 
I tune into the Iris section of the SRG Club quite frequently, and by the way I breed Tree Paeonies, which I have over 400 and have traded seed of them for Aril seed. Also have 100 varieties of Herbaceous Paeonies and have recently been breeding Tall Bearded Iris as we cannot bring new plants into the country, since 2005.
 
Life is sure tough but interesting in the plant world here New Zealand.
 
Kind Regards
 
Derek Halford

 You can see some of Derek's paeonias here : http://www.srgc.net/forum/index.php?topic=13196.0

Starting with his regelia hybrids- they have only numbers ....

[Maggi Young]

2nd batch of DH  regelia pix

[Maggi Young]

 3rd batch of DH  regelia pix

[Maggi Young]

final regelia pic

[Maggi Young]

Now to photos of Aril species, hybrids and Onco seedlings  from Derek

Starting with Iris haynei and hybrids

[Maggi Young]

kirkwoodii  and haynei  hyb
3 pics of Iris kirkwoodii calcarea
kirkwoodii calcarea  and samariae hybrid

[Maggi Young]

Iris kirkwoodii species
'Mhor Pretender'
3 Onco seedlings

[Maggi Young]

 more onco seedlings

[Maggi Young]

4 more onco seedlings

[Maggi Young]

'Prairie Thunder'
Samariae hybrid
2 samariae species pix
susiana hybrid

[Maggi Young]

Thanks to Derek for these photos  of his irises. He has also sent paeony pix, which I will post in another thread.

[Lesley Cox]

Maggi, it's good to see these here on the Forum. Derek also sent them to me, having found my name on the onco thread at some stage and realizing I had an interest in oncos and regelias. He gave me permission to post them here and I've been meaning to do that but have been remiss in not getting them saved from his emails to me, then processing them to the right sizes etc so I guess he thought I didn't want to bother but I did, was just not up to scratch, timewise.

Derek grows in or near the North Island town of Palmerston North (usually called by the locals as just Palmerston which annoys the hell out of us in Otago as the original NZ Palmerston is just a little north of Dunedin and the larger, NI town is distinguished by the addition of the word North). Obviously Derek grows them very well indeed and I understand many if not all have come to him in the first place, as seed from Israeli sources. Whatever, they look to be super plants and I hope at some stage to persuade him to offer some rhizomes.

Once many years ago I was given the chance to buy both plants (we could then) and seeds from one David Shahak in Israel. Not sure now why I didn't take up that opportunity - probably hardupness - but somewhere I still have some wonderful colour catalogues from his nursery. There were many species offered at the time, more species than the many hybrids which are available today. If only one could roll back the years and make better decisions than one did, at the time!