Chris B and I took ourselves off to Leeds at the weekend to attend the Iris study day and thought it worth giving a quick report of the highlights!
World of Iridaceae, Leeds 22 September
Having left Northumberland with the sun barely over the horizon, Chris and I managed to get to Leeds in time for a welcome cup of coffee before the day started.
First up was an A-Z of Iridaceae from Brian Mathew This included some useful id tips - all irids have 3 stamens, they can have bulbs, corms and rhizomes (and as Tony Hall showed later swollen roots), their leaves are always leathery, fibrous and tough - not juicy if crushed and the leaves are often in the form of flat fans.
He then took us through the alphabet looking at plants, people and places, from our notes here are some of our highlights Acidanthera candida - possible a variety/form of A bicolor - pure white and very scented Then lots of crocus, with helpful shots of just where they are found in the wild. Then Iris prismatica, the white form of which I will be searching for immediately! Along with any Patersonias, an Australian iris genus which looked good fun.
Tony Hall then talked about Juno iris, I think this is the third time I've heard this talk and I could hear it 3 times more and still learn something each time! I'm going to try planting some outside and just see what happens, my only thought is that Tony saying they are easy to grow may not be the same as me finding them easy to grow.
His slides were stunning, some flowers almost sculptural in their shapes in close up, really made me wish I(Sue) could draw them, I'll certainly be using them as inspiration.
After lunch Edmund Heaton talked about south american irids, including a range of utterly stunning Tigridia species from Mexico which I'll(Sue) be on the look out for including T alpestris, bicolor, ehrenbergii, flammea, mexicana, multiflora and venusta. In other words pretty much any one
The day was brought to a stunning close by Rod Saunders who took us through the South African irids, Ixias, Tritonias, Sparaxis grandiflora etc etc - we have pages and pages of names and notes so trying to pick out just a few is really hard, but here are some, Babinia pygmea - 2" cream flowers, Hesperantha humilis, apparently many Hesperanthas are night opening so great for the working gardener I think. Freesia occidentalis, apparently 15% of people can't smell freesias, is this true? Lots of gladiolus, plants I'm (Sue) really getting to grow more of these plants, easy from seed and pretty fast to flower. Nivenias, woody iris, must try again to germinate seed. His pictures of sheets of flowers in amazing 'sock it to you' colours were just wonderful.
As we left, tired but happy even two hours on the motorway seemed a very small price to pay for the huge amount of information and ideas we'd got from people passionate about their plants. Oh and we did buy some more plants as well, despite me(Sue) telling myself that to put any more in I have to take something out.
Sue and Chris
