On Feb 4, 2013, at 12:27 PM, Dennis Kramb wrote: > Inspired by some of the oddball success stories of Dr. Thomas Tamberg made > in Germany, I wanted to try crossing PCIs with some of the irises in my > collection (I. prismatica, tridentata, versicolor, virginica, etc.). > > I've given up for now. But I'm keeping my eye on Tamberg's work, because > each year more new & interesting things pop up. Dear Dennis and all, I too am inspired by Tomas Tamberg's work, but my thoughts were slightly different. All the PCN species have a diploid number of 40. My interest is to hybridize these with another Iris species that has a diploid number of 40, but is easier to grow. Last spring I got 3 PCNs from Wild Ginger Farm and had success crossing the PCN 'Pacific Rim' x Iris lactea and the reverse and I lactea alba x 'Pacific Rim'. I lactea may be the easiest of all wild iris to grow in the Kansa City area. The resulting seeds looked quite different depending on the pod parent. I sent all those with "Pacific Rim' as the pod parent back to Wild Ginger Farm for them to try growing. I have planted those with I lactea as a pod parent. Years ago Tomas Tamberg made the same cross and showed that it can be done, but he too had only a single PCN to work with since they are very difficult in Germany. I do hope more people will cross modern multi- generation PCN hybrids with I lactea to get a new generation of easy to grow Iris with at least some of the characters of todays PCNs. Keep trying Dennis. Best Jim W.