cliftoncat said:This is exciting, Jan! Pics? And what does 'code the crosses' mean? 
Jan has most of that right. Coding the crosses is a means of identifying each seed-result -- because as Jan said, every cross can produce multiple seeds. Which results in multiple babies -- which grow up to be entirely different-looking Irises. As an example -- all of your seedlings created this year would probably indicate the year of hybridization -- so your code would start with 16. Then you want to identify the parents -- so maybe it would be the first cross of 2016, so your code would increase to 16-1. You would have a record somewhere that #1 is a cross between whatever and whatever. And if there were ten seedling from this same cross, you would assign a number to each seedling. So now your code would look like this: 16-1-1, or 16-1-2, or 16-1-3, etc.
The babies of your second cross would be: 16-2-1, 16-2-2, 16-2-3, etc.
It gets complicated when you cross one of your seedlings to a named variety -- or heaven help you -- cross one of your seedlings to another of your seedlings!!
Now the naming part -- that doesn't happen until you have decided to publicly introduce a given Iris. And you have to submit the name to AIS for approval.
Lining out is the process of planting a given cultivar/seedling/etc. out in an effort to produce increases -- either to give it a second look and/or start producing enough of something that you're going to introduce.
Hope that makes sense..............
