Maybe this will be in the article that Bob eventually sends us, but I am hoping that someone will explain to the bulb novice who, while growing or admiring various irises over the years, but never having joined any of the Iris organizations, doesn't know what the traditional standard divisions or classifications are and which kinds of irises fall under those divisions. And secondly, but probably more important to me, I hope Bob, or someone else in the know, will give a brief synopsis of which species all the current hybrid types were derived from, possibly cross-correlating it with that excellent handout Bob sent us. Since I have or have seen very few species Iris, what I do see and what gets offered the most by nurseries and mail order catalogs are these broad categories of Iris hybrid (?) types. The most common that I always see offered include: Bearded/German [with subcategories of Tall, Intermediate, and Dwarf?], Dutch, Siberian, Spuria, Japanese, Louisiana, and less often: English or Spanish, Reticulata, Juno & Onocyclus hybrids, and Pacific Coast hybrids. I am not familiar with the artificial group called Crested Irises. I am extremely curious how these all tie back into the individual species or combinations of species that are in Bob's handout, and which Subgenus or Section (or combination?) each belongs to. --Lee Poulsen Pasadena area, California, USDA Zone 9-10 On Mar 9, 2004, at 9:13 AM, Robt R Pries (by way of Mary Sue Ittner <msittner@mcn.org>) wrote: > Dear All, > > Somehow I have lost the file I had developed for introducing this > Topic of the week so I will have to get started with a quickly cobbled > together version. Since I have also had problems sending it I will > send this as a repy to Mary Sue and see if it works > > The topic of the week is Iris;