An excerpt from a past North Star Lily Society newsletter about the real Iowa Rose, hybridized by Dick Prochaska in Minnesota:
The parentage is a Lydia Cramer dark pink seedling pollen on Oregon Bulb Farms’ ‘Hallmark, ‘ and that cross got
‘White Prince’ pollen to make ‘Iowa Rose.’
But did you know that at its debut at a lily show, a sister seedling was seen as a more promising hybrid?
The sister seedling, a light pink lily, similar to the color of cotton candy, was also exhibited at the Arboretum
show in 1984. It won a blue ribbon as did ‘Iowa Rose’, which was also unnamed at this point. This lily attracted
more attention than ‘Iowa Rose.’
In his haste to show the new hybrids, Dick cut off too much of the stem, leaving only a couple inches of
leaves. This lily, which Marv Truhn, among others, urged Dick to register, did not come back the next year, much
to Dick’s dismay. If he were to do it again, he would have waited another year to increase the stock or scaled the
bulb, but hindsight is always 20/20.
Dick had better luck with ‘Iowa Rose.’ It was also cut in the same way for the show but it returned and
produced multiple stem bulblets which were used to increase the stock.
‘Iowa Rose’ was chosen the best downfacing seedling (1c) at the 1985 Iowa Society show in Des Moines.
His daughter Annette Wilson and her husband, Dale, took the seedling stem down to the show. Because of the
win at that show, Dick decided to name the lily ‘Iowa Rose.’
