What a beautiful iris! It actually looks a bit like the eye of Sauron (sp?) on each petal if you look at it juuuuust right

Oh Celia I know! It is fantastic!!

Mordor is striking!

Bought Mordor last year for the looks. People had to explain the name to me.

Hi Dogs and LindaLee -- welcome to the Iris forums.

Linda -- it's nice to see someone from the western Chicago suburbs -- I'm a transplant from Elmhurst!!

I'd toyed with the idea over the years, that if we ever moved elsewhere (where I could have more sunny and preferably deer proof beds), I would have themed beds. Among the themes would be SF and fantasy, and between the irises and the daylilies there are a lot of plants that could be used.

(Huge Tolkien fan here for many decades, also Star Wars, Star Trek, and SF in general - though wrt the last three, not as much as when I was younger. But as DH is an even bigger SF fan, we see just about every SF movie that comes out, unless it gets horrible reviews - in which case, we wait until we can rent the DVD.)

Still, surprising to see a 'Mordor' iris!

I love Mordor......... now we need a Mt. Doom..... On second thought I could just nickname some of my irises that did not make it Mt Doom.

I moved Starship Enterprise last year into my micro climate near the house, hoping it would do better. I bought Mordor last year. I was surprised how large the rhizome was for a little guy.

Tom - I think that may be due to the vendor as much as the iris. I got some very large dwarf rhizomes last year too, but then I got some extremely small ones as well. So I am thinking it is more a result of how & where they were grown.
What surprised me with SF iris is how few are named for the ladies. Why is there not a Hermione to go with the Dumbledore, Muggles & Golden Snitch? Or a Arwen Evenstar to go with Eye of Sauron, Mordor, et al? I think there may be a Princess Leia out there but I would need to check the AIS wiki.

Leslie, I wonder if it is because
A) there are already a lot of flowers and cultivars with lady names
Or
B) there aren't a lot of ladies to begin with in sci-if or adventure shows. There's often a token love interest or a secondary character, but only in more recent movies do women have a more significant role than the damsel in distress or love interest....

Some of the names for children's book are not used because Sterling Innerst died & his were all medians. The TB people must feel that the men's name pack more 'punch'.

Tall Bearded Iris (Iris 'Galadriel's Ring')

Wonderful thread! To drag discussion from the space-age back down to the earthly, who could not be desperate to own an iris called 'Why Cows Gossip'?



I love the ambiguity - does it refer to certain sorts of people , or is it simply one of life's mysteries ? And it's a beautiful iris!! Definitely on my Easter Bunny list...

Tom - I think that may be due to the vendor as much as the iris. I got some very large dwarf rhizomes last year too, but then I got some extremely small ones as well. So I am thinking it is more a result of how & where they were grown.
What surprised me with SF iris is how few are named for the ladies. Why is there not a Hermione to go with the Dumbledore, Muggles & Golden Snitch? Or a Arwen Evenstar to go with Eye of Sauron, Mordor, et al? I think there may be a Princess Leia out there but I would need to check the AIS wiki.

While I might buy something for the name, I do have to say that it won't stay in the garden if it doesn't perform, or if I think it is ugly, or just has colors I don't like.

Years ago (getting back to the SF and fantasy theme) I bought the daylily 'Lord of Rings'. (At that time, the AHS had restrictions on naming that we don't have today, so it could not properly be called 'Lord of the Rings'.) The daylily was by a master daylily hybridizer and won an H.M., but the flowers did not want to open well (what I consider well) in my garden, so it got the boot. (To be fair, it wasn't growing in the best of places... and I have issues with purple daylilies in general, anyway.)



On the other hand, sometimes a plant will have a name that is "close enough", as with the narcissus 'Loth Lorien' (as opposed to "Lothlorien", as Tolkien had it) and you end up loving it (even if the name isn't quite correct). Scheepers used to sell it, and I loved it, but I lost mine and they don't carry it anymore. I would really like more of that daffodil.



(The cups of 'Loth Lorien' looked more lemon-y to me than in the ATP image... here is an old image I found, where the lemon cups had faded:

)

Right now the only iris I have is a NOID that I got at a plant swap last May. I'm certain it's just the species type of iris, but it may get some friends in the upcoming years now that I see so many great themed irises! I actually really like purchasing plants with neat names, which I sort of chide myself for because I know that only encourages less scrupulous people/companies to pick up a cultivar, change the name, and sell it under a 'false' name. I can't help liking the great names, though. I really think Starship Enterprise is a serious contender for me.

There was also an iris hybridizer's website I stumbled upon early last year that had three that all seemed perfect and related to my husband, so I was going to order them. I left the website up in a tab on my web browser, kept postponing it or forgetting about it, and at some point I must have closed the tab because when I went looking for it later, it was gone. Shame on me for waiting so long and not putting it in my favorites. I hope I stumble across it again some day.

DnD, search by the name and "bearded Iris"--should bring up a list of vendors. You can use ATP's Iris database to search by name and get the hybridizer, so you can Google that name. Or if you want to treemail the three Iris names to me, I will do it for you. I gots research skills.

You also have some Daylilies that I would be happy to have in trade for Iris if you want to take a look at my haves list.

@lovemyhouse , I don't remember the names, I just remember the general gist of them. One had to do with blue eyes, another I think had to do with dress blues...If I could remember the exact names, I could pinpoint a gardener or hybridizer that sells them.

Thank you for the offer to trade! I may take a gander at your iris list and see... Although I have a TON of seeds to plant this year and almost no space left to put much of anything, irises are neat in that they can just be put in on top of the grass and not need me to dig a spot in the clay soil for them. (Most of my seeds and small plants have to go in a raised bed or risk the wrath of the lawn mower.) I'll peek at your list soon and let you know if I decide to add any irises to my garden. The only trouble is I have no idea what in my garden will propagate well and what won't; all of my daylilies are first-year for me, so I'm cautious about promising any just yet. I don't want to have to come back later and let you know that I don't have any to send to you. There are a few, however, that I know I already have enough of to share, as long as I don't lose any of those over the winter, such as Ruby Spider, Lights of Detroit, and a couple of others.

I don't mind a for-postage trade if that is better for you.

That might work, too. Thank you for offering that, it's really generous of you, but I want to find something in my garden that you would like, too! I haven't had a whole lot of time to sit and think about it yet, though. Maybe you could let me know your top 5 (or more) favorites so that I know atleast a couple of them should make it through the winter and have a few extra fans built up next year.