I understand where you are coming from, I have posted unknowns in the past and I have a few this yr that I might post just to get a maybe. I always try to find the might be named iris and grow it next to the unknown and compare them that way. If they don't match then I know it wasn't that name and I either keep searching or just figure it's a never to be id_ed and add it to my who the heck knows what it is row and enjoy it when it blooms anyway.

I think most of us here are responsible enough to not pass on misnamed irises.

littlebit

Irisnut:
You make some good points here. Many people come here asking for help in identification. Sometimes without even a picture.
Personally, I think its fun to try and identify an unknown, but the name suggested should be a starting point, not an ending point in the investigative process. It's also a learning experience for those interested in becoming skillfull in identification. The more you see of these unknowns and various responses to them, the more you appreciate their subtle differences, and the more you can increase your skills.
I truly hope that when I respond to an 'ID request' that the response is taken the way it is meant: a suggestion. If you are serious about finding the name of your iris...please do not give up! But follow up. Seek out those who grow the 'suggested name', or acquire one to grow alongside your own. Do your research, and many times your diligence will pay off with a positive ID.
Laetitia

i completely agree with you, yet i just asked myself... i see about 6-8000 iris a season by visiting all the growers in my area, and then when my area finishes blooming, i usually head to oregon and see the top growers there. i take 10s of 1000s of pics and have a photographic memory, so with all my visits, research and pics i do get a good grasp on many many iris. i feel pretty confident in the id i was just given because i see so many growers and had a hunch it was suttons prior to my quest. i am sure i will run across this in my travels now that i have a name and will be able to tell in person, but i agree the avg person pops in the forum with a koolaid smelling iris and walks away forever trading with some name just tossed in the ring and no further research... i wanted this ones name because i love it, being a space ager and newer looking iris i knew this could be id-ed, i didn't even bother posting the 3 pink medians i have, to me its just to iffy to even bother...
on the flip side, i do offer names if i think its a possibility, no harm is pointing someone in the right direction, with 60,000 names out there, its nice to try and help!

I think posting even pics out of focus helps train a person how to take better iris shots.

You people who do so all the time help us learn what to look for. Purple based fan was something I knew nothing about until I posted.

Sometimes if a dwarf iris looks like mine I venture a guess asking as in the case of out of focus Betsy Boo if the iris has grey veining and to look in my journal and compare if I have a photo but I am no expert.

I id noids by getting a rhizome I think it might be if I can and grow it beside the noid.

I am still looking for Blue Doll, Snowtree, and Princess Victoria Luise, not spelled correctly I am sure. I have gotten those noids in garden web trades last year and just suspect from PBF in my Rhein Nixe but not in the Rhein Nixe noid that it may be a Goos & Koeneman noid around 1910. My person I traded with said it was a little more yellow in the standards but like Rhein Nixe in all the other ways. I have to be patient and see the bloom but it was her Grandmother's who had it since 1910 and most likely very worth saving.

Blue Doll noid was found by an abandoned building and was three inches tall the first year then when it recovered became 9 inches total. Same person gave me a cherry garden like noid, a going my way type noid, a tan and lilac type noid and a snowtree like noid.

Have not seen them bloom except for the photos she sent with them. Not exactly detailed but something to start looking in the right direction and in the blue doll like noid picture she had a yardstick beside it to measure height. I would not have thought of that.

She also came up with a neat place that sells a CD with 400 or more pictures of MTB, SDB, MTB, IB type irises that was not expensive and helped us id some noids and had breeder, intro and awards on it. Needless to say after she did that I suggested she join HIPS for I was impressed with the HIPS members treatment of me here on the web and off the web.

Learning neat new things all the time. Hope I never stop.
Julianna

Again, be careful about talking down to fellow forum members. It's very condescending and unattractive. If you don't want to give your input then I sure as heck don't want it.

alicia7b, there is nothing condescending about pointing out the difficulties (impossibilities) of identifying irises by photos alone or the irresponsibility of assigning suggested names to unknown irises as definitive identities without substantial corroborating evidence. Many ... I would even go so far as to speculate that most ... of the people who come to this and other iris-related forums and mailing lists looking for IDs for their unknown irises are not well enough informed to realize that there are almost 60,000 registered irises. Nor do many of these folks even seem to recognize the very strong possibility that their unknowns may not be registered cultivars at all, esp. when dealing with historic irises.

We have all seen folks request ID assistance, then grab onto the first name offered and joyfully exclaim, "That's IT!!!" Well, that's NOT it. As others on this thread have stated, that's only a starting point. It's a suggestion for a named cultivar to acquire for side by side, in-garden observations and comparisons with the unknown iris.

Unfortunately, few folks who request IDs are going to invest the money, time, and research into verifying the accurate identifications of their unknown irises. If you are one of the dedicated gardeners who is willing and able to do so, more power to you.

For those gardeners who are just looking for a "close enough" name match, please stop. Or if you insist on putting a name on the unknown iris in your garden, at least do NOT share or sell your extra rhizomes under an unconfirmed name. All that does is put even more iris imposters into circulation, frustrating future recipients of the imposters, frustrating iris show officials who may be faced with the imposters on the judging tables, and forever confusing the future of irises. Aside from potentially increasing the value of an iris for sale, there's simply no valid reason to assign an unconfirmed name to an iris.

There are two excellent articles on the HIPS website that address the challenges and procedures of attempting to identify unknown irises. The first article linked below is authored by Phil Edinger, HIPS Identification Chairman and perhaps the most widely recognized, experienced, and respected expert in the identification of historic irises. Both of these articles are, in my opinion, must-reads for anyone wishing to attempt to identify unknown irises in their own gardens.

"I'm Sorry, I Didn't Get Your Name..."

"Don't skimp on film!!"

No condescention intended. Only valid concern and invaluable information.

Laurie

I think it's important to realize too to realize that some of us do know how many registered iris are out there, and that we would not ID an iris unless the named variety was growing in our garden so that we could compare it. If I give any of these away, which I'm sure I will in the future since it's so prolific, I will label it simply "fragrant white".

I have a purple that I think may be Crimson King, and I ordered a Crimson King this spring, so then I can see. Many others I will never know the name of, or even try to find out, but this white was so outstanding I thought I'd give it a try.

The original pics were in focus -- although I lost resolution when uploading to picturetrail. The original pics were taken with a 35mm Pentax camera, which I never expected to last this long. Had I known the camera would last over 30 years, I would have bought a telephoto lens and flash years ago. I'm waiting for it to break down before I buy a digital camera.

That's why I used the words "many", "most", and "few" instead of "all" and "none".

Laurie

There is far, far more confusion being created daily on the shelves at Wal-Mart and the like with the mis-identified irises being sold in packages as named varieties than there ever could be with the couple of folks at GW who may not know any better than to trade an iris under a possible ID from other members. I think the level of confusion is inconsequential in comparison. Few folks are going to remember that name for any length of time, and even fewer are going to pass it along under that name, and fewer still who receive it in trade will be keeping the mis-ID with it. However millions of irises are being sold under incorrect names every day at these box stores.

Mike

garden_of_mu: I agree that stores selling mis-named iris is a problem. I bought 'Batik' but it ended up being a purple/white short stalk iris that I'm probably going to dig up and give away this year (in the meantime I'll be trying to find a real 'Batik'). I bought a package of several rhizomes with light blue standards and dark blue falls; they bloom at different times with different heights and different beard colors. Now that I know what you get at the box, I'm not going to pay money for these when I can get true, named iris for only a little more.

As for posting NOID's on the forum, I've done it so I can call my iris something other than "mauve/white with yellowish beard" (or whatever one is blooming at the time). I have enough integrity to never claim a NOID iris is actually named. And I know plenty of people who appreciate a piece of a nice iris, whether or not it has a name.

I'm glad this information got posted, I think it's good to point this stuff out from time to time. New people are reading the forums every day, if the information is "old hat" then skip it and read something more relevant.

Why blame just the box stores? How about the growers who are complicit in providing an assortment of iris under one name?

Neil

Yep, they're to blame as well.

Speculating on the possible ID of an iris is interesting, fun, and I believe informative to novices when accompanied with an explanation for the guess. I have hundreds of noids and have ID'd dozens over the years - always confirming by comparison later, but initially ID'd thru pics and suggestions of more experienced folks. Some irises are so distinctive they are easy to ID, others I will never find a name for.

Mike

I have several that I bought from our annual club sale that were not what they were labeled. If they are gorgeous ones (most were) I will assign them an identification number in my garden instead of listing them with a name. This way I don't have to quess and possibly be wrong.

I think that there are a lot of iris being sold even by commercial growers that have the wrong ID. I don't think that there are very many people giving bad ID on purpose. They really believe they know what they have but really they only know what they were told when the got the iris. Mike is right about the Marts. I got started in iris from a few I bought from Wal-Mart. The first time group I got 7 out of 8 are probably right. I have made purchases three times since then for a total of about 15 named iris and believe that maybe one of these is correct. I like the historics but I doubt that 50% of iris registered before 1950 have the correct ID. Some that are common have had their names switched. Some of these historics are so close to being alike that there may not be ant body alive today that could ID them correctly. I have two historics that I collected from the wild so to speak that I thought were the same. They are just alike except that the falls on one is 1/4 inch wider than the other.

For every iris grower who likes to have his/her irises correctly ID'd. there are a zillion out there who don't give a D$%^. That is where the problem lies.
There are also many who are ignorant that Irises come in such a range, or even ignorant that they have names. That is our job, but we are only educating those who come here to be educated, and yes, as alicia says, we should be very nice to them :-)
If you are genuinely concerned about correct ID's then you need to be very careful about where your irises come from, and prepared to either label an iris as an unknown or chuck it out.
You also need to be very careful about how you share your irises, but all the care in the world probably doesn't make a lot of difference.
I have in the past, sold irises in bloom in pots, and no manner of explaining to people that a particular iris was only introduced 5 years ago, will covince them that it isn't the same one their neighbouor has been growing for yonks and yonks.
I have given many irises away with names attached but people don't bother to keep up the names, then ask me next year what the lovely yellow one is called.
These days i give most of my chucks away without names, and only name those i pot up for the garden club annual stall, or for the Iris society trading tables.
I try very hard to keep mine correctly named, to the point of mapping on paper and keeping a data base. If I am tardy with digging and dividing and 2 clumps are overlapping, then I chuck the overlaps, or if they are nice rhizomes from good cultivars I plant them seperately with BOTH cultivar names and a ? until I can ID them.
With so many hundreds of iris it is easy to make mistakes. Those of us who grow hundreds are more likely to make mistakes than gardeners who only grow a few varieties.
As far as ID'ing on line, I once posted several pairs of similar photos to see what people thought. They included 2 blooms that looked almost exactly the same but were different cultivars, 2 photos of the same iris in different light and different stages of bloom, and 2 similar looking iris of different species (a PCI and a SDB). Most people were very confused. I was most amused that many had trouble seperating the PCI and the SDB.
Laurie - you may remember the photos. I will try and resurrect them for you all.
Finally, some irises have such awful registered names, that I think a garden name might be preferable :-) I have a hard time trying to remember that my "named" unregistered seedlings do not officially have the name I have given them.
Cheers, Jan in Oz, feeling iris deprived except for one dear old fashioned looking JI (cross?) from seed sent me from Christie Hensler a few years back.