LynNY said: @KentPfeiffer You are just the man I wanted to talk to! I looked at this, and wondered if it were crossed w/Aristocracy there might be a chance to get my fantasy iris.
MM is kind of a darker version of the fantasy iris - darker purple but the same hue, blue beards but darker than the imaginary plant. What say you? I have decided to try to make this iris but have never gotten farther than creating pods that I never planted because I didn't have enough sunny space. After my heroic efforts last summer, I now have the space to grow things out.
It certainly could work, the only way to know is to try it and see what happens.
Couple of things to consider. I used Magnificent Masterpiece quite a bit about a decade ago when it was a recent introduction. It would set pods reasonably well, but I don't recall ever getting a decent anther from it. For what it's worth, I wasn't super impressed with any of it's seedlings.
I never grew Aristocracy so obviously can't offer much advice about it. However, it shows up in the parentage of just one registered iris. That's pretty surprising given that it's a Keith Keppel iris. If it is fertile and/or a good parent, you'd expect a lot more (Haunted Heart has 100s of descendants at this point and it was introduced a few years after Aristocracy).
It might be easier to get what you want by crossing Magnificent Masterpiece to a blue bearded light blue iris (lots of choices there). When you cross purple irises to light blue irises, you mostly get seedlings in a variety of shades of purple. Produce enough seedlings and you should get at least one that is the shade you want and retains the blue beard. One last thing, if you do get a lighter version of Magnificent Masterpiece, you might find that you lose the contrast between the beards and the petals. The seedling below came from a cross of Magnificent Masterpiece and Royal Sterling. It may look like the flower you are describing?
