From “The Fascinating Plicatas” in Garden Irises, Edited by L. F. Randolph:
“Of all the color groups in the tall bearded irises, one of the most fascinating is the plicata pattern. These are the irises with a light ground color, usually white, cream, or pale yellow, that is stippled, dotted, or edged with varying amounts of a darker color. Some of the most beautiful varieties are to be found among the plicatas, and some of the best specimens of perfectly branched stalks. Conversely, many of the plicatas have blossoms that lack substance, and while they are exquisite early in the morning, they are often semi-collapsed later in the day after they have been exposed to the full heat of the sun.
“Plicatas never fail to attract the gardening public and to intrigue the iris novice. Among iris fanciers they have fluctuated in popularity over the years and have never quite enjoyed the favor of some of the other color groups. This can be attributed partly to the fact that most of them lack the carrying power of solid colors and must be viewed at close range to be appreciated fully.”
From “Tall Bearded Irises: The Late Twentieth Century” in Irises: A Gardener’s Encyclopedia by Claire Austin:
“The 1960s and 1970s saw an increase in the size of Tall Bearded iris flowers, but no great advances in quality were made until the 1980s and 1990s. Among the most influential iris hybridizers in this new generation are Barry Blyth of Melbourne, Australia, and Keith Keppel of Salem, Oregon, who have been raising seedlings for 50 years. Their work and that of Joe Ghio in Santa Cruz, California, has increased the choice of flower shape, height, and colours available.
“Blyth and Keppel regularly visit each other and exchange both ideas and pollen. Blyth has registered more than 800 hybrids with the American Iris Society, including Tall Bearded irises and many median irises. His plants tend to be unconventional. Many are heavily ruffled and unusual in colours with extraordinary patterning. Keppel, working first in California, became known for his plicata irises….
“Over the years California has been home to many famous hybridizers, such as William Mohr, who worked around the beginning of the century, and Sydney Mitchell, who continued Mohr’s work. Around 1940 Jim Gibson started to hybridize for plicata-style Tall Bearded irises….”
Hello!
This is the fifth of ten posts featuring photographs of irises that I took at Oakland Cemetery toward the end of April. The previous posts are:
Nature’s Palette: Exploring Iris Colors, Their Culture, and Their History (1 of 10);
Nature’s Palette: Exploring Iris Colors, Their Culture, and Their History (2 of 10);
Nature’s Palette: Exploring Iris Colors, Their Culture, and Their History (3 of 10):
Nature’s Palette: Exploring Iris Colors, Their Culture, and Their History (4 of 10).
Because of the enormous variety of iris shapes and colors, iris enthusiasts often describe them from different dimensions. Bearded irises, for example, are distinguished from beardless irises; their overall form and height may place them in categories like miniature, intermediate, or tall, whether they have beards or not; and their dominant colors may be used to describe them as white, yellow, purple, or orange, regardless of the presence of beards and regardless of their height.
“Plicata” — similarly — is an iris color designation; or, more accurately, a designation derived from the color patterns present on the standards and falls. That may seem confusing, but when you see examples like the ones I’ve included in the post, suddenly it’s quite clear that these irises exhibit the plicata pattern described in the first quote above: “irises with a light ground color, usually white, cream, or pale yellow, that is stippled, dotted, or edged with varying amounts of a darker color.” Unlike all the other irises in my series — where one color obviously dominates or the flowers contain a multitude of related colors — these irises exhibit the plicata color pattern just defined.
The photos below show two different developments in plicata patterning. The first seven — where a pattern of saturated purple swatches and dots is distributed heavily throughout the petals of both the standards and falls — represent an earlier period in the genetic history of irises, where breeders sought to produce irises that captured visual attention with sharp contrasts between bright colors. The remaining photos are a later development, where the plicata colors are more subtle, with softer transitions among the colors between the iris standards and what resembles watercolor brushing of shades of purple and blue throughout the falls. The standards — which our eyes register as white — actually contain flecks of very light blue and purple, more concentrated toward the base of each upright petal and gradually fading to white toward the edges. Even the beard colors show this carefully managed color transition: instead of a clear distinction between the beards and petals like in the first seven photos, these photos show a gradual distribution of yellow/orange color from the beard itself to the rest of the flower. I took the closeup photos toward the end of the galleries to make all these color transitions more visible; select one of them to view in a full-screen slideshow to better see what I mean.
One way to think about technological developments that enabled iris breeders to produce these elegant colors is by making an analogy to developments in digital photography, both developments occurring in the mid- to late-twentieth century. Consider a digital or mobile device camera that you might have had two decades ago: like any camera today, that device had certain capabilities that all cameras have, like the ability to focus on a subject and accurately capture an image in its storage. But the number of colors that cameras can capture has expanded significantly, which means that more recent cameras can render subtle variations among colors that their predecessors could not. Similarly, iris breeders learned how to genetically create new color combinations and manipulate their presence in iris flower petals with greater precision, enabling these irises to demonstrate delicate arrangements of colors that had previously not been possible. Luckily, our cameras — with their ability to capture more colors — can detect these precise color transitions and reproduce them accurately in photographs.
In the quotation at the top of this post, the author notes that “many of the plicatas have blossoms that lack substance, and while they are exquisite early in the morning, they are often semi-collapsed later in the day after they have been exposed to the full heat of the sun.” This difference is observable in my photographs, where the later photos show the “lack of substance” the quote describes. Especially in the standards, you can see through some of the petals. That translucence — combined with their near-white color — meant that these flowers photographed best in shady or overcast lighting, since they would reflect too much light (leading to a loss of delicate detail) into the camera’s sensor when the sun was out. The irises in the first seven photos, however, have thicker, opaque petals — so very little light passes through them, is instead reflected back to the camera, and they photograph well in both sunlight or shade.
The placement of the two kinds of irises I photographed mirrors their botanical and genetic history. Those first seven are all located in an older section of Oakland, where their presence is somewhat independent of memorial elements nearby. The remaining irises were added to the property more recently, where they were planted in conjunction with new concrete structures — some of which are visible in the photos — including headstones, urns, and rectangular markers. Planting irises so close to these structures reveals itself as an intentional design choice: the gray stone contrasts smoothly with the muted but bright colors of the irises, and the texture of the iris flowers and their leaves softens the appearance of the stark intersecting lines of the stone. This kind of placement represents ongoing developments in memorial gardens, where colors, contrasts, and textures are combined to assemble a space for both quiet contemplation and the preservation of memory.
Thanks for reading and taking a look!
