I'm just wondering if there is a way do search by characteristics...for example I am trying to identify a white re-blooming iris and I know that it was hybridized between the 60's and the 80's. Is there any way to search for a list of irises that fit there criteria...either on ATP or on the AIS wiki?

Sure. Here is the Iris DB link
The Irises Database

The second link down from the top is Search By Characteristics. Don't be discouraged if your results are limited or you don't get any. Try again with less criteria selected. There are some things the database handles less well than others.

I found a bunch.

I clicked these categories:

TB

Rebloom

Color - choose "White"

Classification - choose "Self"

There is no good way to specify the date range.

Doing this produced 25 possibilities.

6 of these met your criteria.

Brother Carl 1983 Zurbrigg

I Do 1974 Zurbrigg

Immortality 1982 Zurbrigg

White Reprise 1986 Moores

Silver Screen 1989 Byers

Starship 1989 Byers

Winterland 1990 Byers


There is an issue though with the database. If the cultivar does not have a piece of information listed about it, then it will not be chosen when you are searching for that characteristic.

Thanks Debra and Greg. Now I can go look up those specific cultivars and see if I get a match. I know it's not Immortality, but I can check the others!

With your help I found the one I was looking for. I had forgotten the name I was told when I was given this. It was brought by one of the Master Gardeners to one of the first meetings I attended. I couldn't remember who had brought it and no one else could tell me. From the list I thought White Reprise was the name I remembered...so I looked it up and it's a match. To confirm it I checked the others and none of them had the same markings. So now I have one less NoID! Thanks to Debra and Greg one more iris has it's name!

It's the re-bloomer I just listed in the Re-Bloom thread...

White Reprise, 1984, Walter Moore

It's lovely!

Misawa77 said:

There is no good way to specify the date range.

There is, in fact, a way to search a range of dates, although it's limited to searching an entire decade at a time. For example, if you type 198 in the Year of Registration box, you'll get a list of every iris registered from 1980 through 1989. It's not as flexible as one might wish, but it does create some interesting options.

Say you are interested in buying some of Keith Keppel's irises and you want to see which recent ones have won the Award of Merit. Go to http://garden.org/plants/group..., type Keppel in the Hybridizer field, then go down to the Awards field and check the box for Award of Merit. A write-box will appear, type in 200 and you'll get a list of all of his irises that won the AM from 2000 through 2009. Do the search again, except type 201 in the write-box an you'll get a list of his 2010 - 2014 AM winners. Takes just two searches and less than a minute to get a list of his AM winners since the turn of the century. Not as elegant as being able specify a range of dates certainly, but I'd love to know of a faster way to generate such a list. Then say you really like his plicatas and just want to see which of those won the Award of Merit. Do the same searches as above and also check the box for Plicata in the Flower Patterns field and there they are with a mere push of a button. You can dig that sort of information out of other sources, but it will take a fair bit of time and determination to get it. The search possibilities in the Iris Database are really almost endless.

Great information Kent! Thanks for taking the time to explain it. I'm relatively new to the site so it's helpful to learn how to use the search function.

And I am not that new but I am learning a lot about the function also. Thanks Kent.