I was always wondering why there are so many nearly identical irises on the market. I do realize that it is extremely difficult to produce a unique iris, but with some, I cannot even tell them apart. The people that approve these introductions; who are they? Do they know about their "almost twins"?

For instance, go to Rocky Top Garden's webpage and look at Jadzia $50.00
Then look 3 down from that,
Jeanne Clay Plank $10.00

On Sutton's website there are quite a few that are similar, but not really almost identical...
Adventurous
Bandwidth
Bold Pattern (more ruffles)
Brighton Beach
Color Shift
Fresh Flavor
Into the Wild

And then they have:
Fruit Stripe
Glamazon ...without the stripes

I have seen a whole lot of blue-violet and white ones with almost the same features. I thought that the idea was to bring in new designs. I didn't say it was easy, as I think I may be 10 years on just one, if I am lucky! (Lucky enough to live that long and to still be able to work in the garden.)

Which ones have you seen that you could not tell apart? Did you get them both?

Can we see your pictures?

For a while I thought

and


were the same. (it didn't help that they were planted near each other).
But there are subtle differences. No similar parenting however!

In my garden, DD has a deeper caste to the falls - more blue.

What I find absolutely fascinating is when the parents or one parent is so dissimilar to the child. Iris genetics is quite complex.

Now I have to look up every single parent and child...it is like getting lost in "Pinterest" or Facebook. You could get lost for hours.

I am trying to make a list of all the irises I have acquired this year and make a detailed summary of each one's attributes, parents, how many children, and of course, the bloom time, height, etc... What do you list in your notebook? Do you do it on paper or the computer?

If you think irises are bad, you should take a look at the daylily world...

I guess any slight improvement (earlier, or later, or more buds, or better branching, or fragrance, or better disease resistance, or more ruffling, or wider edges, or better color, or or or) would be the reason for look-alikes.

.... precisely the reason why below seedling of mine will - just go on being a seedling. This color pattern has been done to death -- lol. It still has potential for parenting, but isn't introducible as it stands on
Fashionista X Applause Line

Evelyn, I enjoy looking up the pedigrees of my iris, too.
I have parents, children, grandchildren, siblings, and cousins in my collection. It's fun to trace a few generations; sometimes I am tempted to draw a family tree, but that might be going a little far.

On my computer, I keep a record of the parentage of each iris, hybrizer, awards won, date of first bloom and date of last bloom, number of stalks blooming, and number of increases each season. I'll also make a note if the substance is especially good. To date, I haven't counted buds or described branching - I might start doing that next spring.

TBMan said:.... precisely the reason why below seedling of mine will - just go on being a seedling. This color pattern has been done to death -- lol. It still has potential for parenting, but isn't introducible as it stands on

Still, it is quite beautiful!

AndreaD said:Evelyn, I enjoy looking up the pedigrees of my iris, too.
I have parents, children, grandchildren, siblings, and cousins in my collection. It's fun to trace a few generations; sometimes I am tempted to draw a family tree, but that might be going a little far.

On my computer, I keep a record of the parentage of each iris, hybrizer, awards won, date of first bloom and date of last bloom, number of stalks blooming, and number of increases each season. I'll also make a note if the substance is especially good. To date, I haven't counted buds or described branching - I might start doing that next spring.

What computer program do you use? I suppose that there are many out there that will do the trick.

Some of my lookalikes:

Simply Sensational Johnson 2007 34 L (Child of Fogbound)



Cloudscape Black 2008 36 ML (Grandchild of Fogbound)



Ice Capades Johnson 2008 37 L-VL



Luxuriant Black 2016 35 EM





This was actually a fun exercise. I really hadn't compared these iris before. I tend to buy iris
impulsively without thinking about what I already have. Need to work on that.

More lookalikes:


Royal Storm Tasco 2001 35 M



Royal Storm's parent:

Tempting Fate Meek 1993 34 ML




Wicked Good Black 2012 35 M



Aleutian Islands Sutton 2008 35 ML




My problem is I have never seen a neglecta that I didn't like, so I know I have some similar
neglectas, but I don't care.

AndreaD said:
This was actually a fun exercise. I really hadn't compared these iris before. I tend to buy iris
impulsively without thinking about what I already have. Need to work on that.

.... been there and STILL doing that -- because all of a sudden, before I knew what was going on, I owned over 1,000 varieties. Iris lovers -- beware of the "burgeoning iris collection" creep

Evelyn,

I don't use a computer program specifically for gardens as such. I use Excel and list the iris alphabetically. Excel is very good as I can insert rows to enter a new iris when I buy one and also insert rows to expand an entry per iris for each season. Pretty soon I'm just going to have one Excel sheet per iris, but I'm not there yet.

I know that other people on the forum who also use Excel can sort their entries by hybridizer or whatever but I didn't set my lists up that way.

I'd be happy to e-mail you an example of what I have.

I think there is more to an iris than just flower colour and pattern. Someone may have introduced an iris that looks similar to others but has better bud count or increases more quickly etc

You are absolutely right!

AndreaD said:Some of my lookalikes:

Simply Sensational Johnson 2007 34 L (Child of Fogbound)

• Tall Bearded Iris (Iris 'Simply Sensational')
• Uploaded by KentPfeiffer

Cloudscape Black 2008 36 ML (Grandchild of Fogbound)

• Tall Bearded Iris (Iris 'Cloudscape')
• Uploaded by KentPfeiffer

Ice Capades Johnson 2008 37 L-VL

• Tall Bearded Iris (Iris 'Ice Capades')
• Uploaded by Calif_Sue

Luxuriant Black 2016 35 EM

• Tall Bearded Iris (Iris 'Luxuriant')
• Uploaded by ARUBA1334

This was actually a fun exercise. I really hadn't compared these iris before. I tend to buy iris impulsively without thinking about what I already have. Need to work on that.

Andrea ~ Well, it shows that you like light blues....

I guess so!

Sometimes if I really like an iris, I'll buy two look alike irises that bloom at different times, one that blooms early and one that blooms late or very late.
Like Black Magic Woman Early to Mid season

Sharp Dressed Man that starts blooming Mid Season and goes for a long time.


That way I get to see them for a very long season.

Tom ~ That's a great idea!

evelyninthegarden said:Tom ~ That's a great idea!

too!

This year, everything seemed to bloom at once. It was the shortest bloom season, but the most blooms, that I've had. Oddly enough, it was the worst bloom season for the NoIDs.