Survival is great for any plant.

I call Dusky Challenger "old reliable."
Blooms with out fail every year, great increaser, and is really a nice clean dark purple.I have had it planted next to Rio Ro Jo for years now. They not only look good together, but I never have to worry if either is going to bloom.

tveguy3 said:And the dark purple looks so good next to orange and yellow's too.

I sandwiched 'Dusky Challenger' between an orange self on one side of it and a yellow self on the other. The result is truly spectacular.

Actually my 'love' of a dark TB is' Before the Storm' as it has grown up through a area of ice. but not everyone gardens in New England..

I like the authentic Dusky Challenger, but I also like Hollywood Nights and Royalty Remembered. I have Hollywood nights planted right next to Golden Panther.

Question for you all. Schreiner's catalog listing for Dusky Challenger lists it as having no fragrance. One of the reasons I think that the plant I received of it from Jung's is not authentic (in addition to having smaller, slightly lighter, less ruffled and less satiny bloom than I remember) is that it smells very potently of grape soda. And so I have obtained a new plant of it from Schreiner's which hopefully will bloom next year so that I can compare it.

However, for ONLY those of you who got your Dusky Challenger direct from Schreiner's, do you agree with them that it has little or no fragrance?

Daisy,
Mine was a Schreiner's.I hate to admit this after growing iris for a little over 30 years, I have never smelled my iris.I have no idea if any of the 250 + different varieties I have have a scent.
So I don't have an answer for you on whether my Dusky Challenger has any fragrance. Hopefully,others are better at smelling their iris

Derylin, Do you check your daylilies for fragrance?

I can't help pushing my nose into every flower to sample its fragrance, if any. With the lilies I usually end up with yellow pollen all over my nose!

City Lights puts out a strong pleasant fragrance. You don't even have to put your nose up to it to smell it.

I tend to stop and smell the flowers, but I check for bees first.

Laurie,
No to smelling the daylilies!
All I can say is I like to smell roses,and I had to give up growing them.It got too cold in the winters here when I was growing them for them to survive.
Now that I have admitted I haven't smelled my iris or my daylilies,maybe I will give it a go next season for both!

Tom,I will remember watching for bees before sticking my nose into them!

Derylin, I had to stop growing roses because in this area it requires spraying with fungicide weekly, or they lose all their leaves. I got tired of it. And the spray exposure may have triggered my autoimmune disease. "agricultural chemicals" is one of the suspected triggers.

Rob, thanks for the tip about City Lights. I like to hear which irises have a strong, "walk by" fragrance. (Don't have to worry about bees!)

I wonder how many times I've gone to work or the store with pollen on my nose!

Roses: I never tried to grow them, and now that Japanese beetle has finally become well established here, I don't plan to start.

A post from another site suggested that people should stick to older, tried and true reliable bloomers if they are not getting regular/ yearly blooms. Dusky Challenger, immortality and Champagne Elegance was at the top of her list. I have also followed a thread here, that asked " if you could only have one iris" and Dusky Challenger was listed by many. Her opinion was that newer irises were more dramatic and shapely, but not as hardy, prolific or regular as the ones mentioned above. The suggestion was to find irises bred about the same time before hardiness, increase and scent were thrown by the wayside in favor of more striking appearance. I live at high altitude, and after many irises planted, that don't die, but do not flourish or bloom, I am concentrating on irises from Montana, Wisconsin and Canada for their reliability.

Teresa ~ That is a very good strategy considering your zone and altitude.

In reference to my earlier post, Does anyone know of a way to search here for irises hybridized and registered in the 1980's or there abouts?
Dusky Challenger 1986
Champagne Elegance. 1986
Absolute Treasure 2005 ( also on list of " if you could only have one iris"
Immortality 1982
English Cottage 1976
Mesmerizer 1990
City Lights 1990

I have often wished that our database could do that. In fact, just now, in the Year of Introduction text box I tried <1990, and also ≤1990, and also Bet 1990 AND 1980. None of the searches worked. I wish it could be set up to work with all of those types of numeric searches, in both the Year of registration, and the year of introduction. @KentPfeiffer are you listening?

For starters, I don't have the ability to alter how the database search engine works. Beyond that, I don't think even Dave can do it. The Plant Admins had discussions about "ranged searches" a few times over the years and the answer was always that it was a good idea, but the structure of the database wouldn't support it.

That said, if you have some understanding of how the search engine works, you can make it do ranged searches to a limited extent. For example, if you want to see all of the irises that were introduced in the 1980s, just type "198" (without the quote marks) in the Year of Introduction box of the Search by Characteristics page of the Irises Database:

https://garden.org/plants/grou...

For what it's worth, the premise that irises were once bred for good growth but are now bred just for striking appearance is wrong. Hybridizers have always valued striking appearance, for the simple reason that that's what sells. Not to mention, it's pretty much the whole point of breeding them in the first place. The perception that older varieties are tougher is just a result of a natural winnowing process: varieties that don't grow well eventually disappear. The vast majority of irises introduced in 1980s (or the 60s or the 30s or whatever) no longer exist. The survivors are almost all good growers that do well across a wide range of climates. Good growth and hardiness aren't the only factors that determine long term survival, but they are certainly important.

Thanks for that tip, Kent!

Like Snork says, just grow it and you will see. Here's my most recent photo of it. Open it to see the entire photo. I have a lot of more modern dark purple irises, including Hollywood Nights, Adriatic Noble, and Royalty Remembered, but somehow Dusky Challenger still beats them all.