Hi guys, I got a problem, and not sure what to do. A year ago I planted tall bearded iris supposedly pallida dalmatica, and this year they started to bloom!
Magnificent flowers, beautifully scented, very impressed, but I was expecting all flowers to be pale blue... and half of them is exactly as I've expected but the other half is dark violet blue.


And my question is, how comes? Are those pallida dalmatica too? Or is it germanica? Or some kind of mixed variety? What do you think?
I wish to cultivate only pallida dalmatica, because I'm also interested in their roots for the essential oils extraction.

They sent you roots of two different cultivars. Possibly they were dug at the juncture where two different clumps were starting to grow together.

..and to the Iris Forum!

Thank you.

Welcome to the club!

Likely as already described, you have two different cultivars growing. If possible tag them while in bloom and
lift and separate the two later. One may be a more aggressive grower and crowd the other out.

Pam has the right idea. I think I'd put a twistem around every bloom stalk of the darker color to mark that cultivar to be separated out.

This season I have used twistems to mark the ones that I will be culling. It is particularly useful where two clumps are verging on each other, to keep me from inadvertently digging up ones I want to keep.

What's a Twistem?

During bloom season I use a Sharpie Extreme marker to write the name or color. This helps when you have them tagged but 2 clumps have grown together.
Tell me more about extracting the e. oils. Interested

Twistems:
https://www.google.com/search?...

I use the bright yellow or red twistems. They show up better than the green ones when it's time to do the digging.

Yes, I'm cutting away the dark iris buds before they have chance to bloom (to avoid uncontrolled crossbreeding) and I tag them. I will keep em though and replant later this year after summer in different place. I wish to also to get seeds of the iris pallida dalmatica, but their male anthers are pollen free/sterile unfortunately. I think the dark ones are some crossbreed of iris pallida dalmatica with something else. I got them from a certain lady who had small garden, not really a mass producer/gardener.

If not that I'm after the rhizome quality and I wish to do controlled breeding I would let them bloom, because they are truly looking stunning and they also smell beautiful.