Diane Whitehead wrote: >You will not get seeds or fertile >pollen from the commercial Iris danfordiae which is a sterile >triploid. Isn't there more than one commercial Iris danfordiae? I'm pretty sure I've had at least two forms at different times over the years. One had much narrower perianth segments than the other. Also, I know from personal experience that what was sold as Iris histrioides Major thirty years ago crossed readily with Iris danfordiae both ways. Nice fat seed pods resulted on both parents. And this has made me wonder if the usually-reported parentage for the hybrids Katherine Hodgkin and Frank Elder , namely Iris winogradowii x histrioides, is not a bluff. In fact, I think Katherine Hodgkin was originally reported to be histrioides x danfordiae. Last year I tried to repeat this cross using Iris Lady Beatrix Stanley and Iris danfordiae: this was a flop both ways. I'm not convinced that Lady Beatrix Stanley is "pure" Iris histrioides; in small ways it's different from the old Major form. Jim McKenney jimmckenney@starpower.net Montgomery County, Maryland zone 7, where Mother Nature was not bluffing today: lots of first earlies in bloom finally.