Newsletter Resources Page on Iris Encyclopedia

The AIS Iris Encyclopedia (also known as the Iris Wiki because you can edit it) has a Newsletter Resources page for all newsletter editors.  This has pointers to a number of American Iris Society resources and others you may find useful.

Thanks to Kathleen Sonntag, the Irises Bulletin editor, one of these resources is the style guide used for Irises.  It is available as either a PDF or Word (docx) document by following the links below.  Eventually we hope to have it as a page on the Iris Wiki so everyone can update it.

The New Style Guide for the AIS Bulletin (Word)

The New Style Guide for the AIS Bulletin (PDF)

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Photos of Award Winning Irises Needed for Iris Encyclopedia

The Iris Encyclopedia has compete listings of American Iris Society Medal winners.  Many of these Medals have a page where you can see photos of the winning irises.  For example, the Dykes Medal, the highest honor, can be seen here. And many of the winners have several photos on their individual pages.  However, in updating these pages to include the 2012 winners, I realized there are several winning irises that have no photos!

While we would like to have photos, or several photos, for every iris in the Iris Encyclopedia, we definitely should have photos of the winning irises.  Can you help us?  What we need are photos you have taken or photos you’ve received permission to use from other sources.  There are photos of some (maybe all) of these irises on the Internet.  However, we need permission from the owner to use the picture.  You can add the photo yourself or we will be glad to do it for you.

Here is a list of the irises needing photos arranged by Medal or Award.  The Dykes Medal, the Founders of SIGNA Medal, the Randolph-Perry Medal, and the Wister Medal are the only ones having photos for all the winning irises.  In fact, ‘Ginny’s Choice’, the 2012 DeBaillion Medal winner from Wayland Rudkin needs a photo!  [Update:  We now have a photo of ‘Ginny’s Choice’ and have included it in the DeBaillion Medal page! 5/2/13]

As a special note for Region 21 members, there are both winning irises by the Sass brothers and Sass Medal/Award winners needing photos.  These are:

Caparne Award

1962 – ‘Black Baby’– H. Sass

1950 – ‘Sound Money’ – J. Sass

and these Sass Medal winners

1975 – ‘Butterscotch Frills’ – M. Hamblen

1974 – ‘Little Bit Blue’ – G. Plough

1973 – ‘Lemon Flurry’ T. Muhlestein

1970 – ‘Drummer Boy’ – Schreiner

1969 – ‘Lime Ripples’ – A. Brown

1966 – (M) ‘Kiss Me Kate’ – P. Cook

1963 – ‘Cloud Fluff’ – W. Greenlee

Can you help with these or any of the other irises on the list?  Thank you!

 

Using the Iris Encyclopedia to Find Iris Suggestions

The Iris Encyclopedia is a great source for learning more about specific irises you already have or know you are interested in.  It currently has, as of December 26, 52,663 cultivars and 36,348 images.  This represents 75% of the registered iris cultivars.

You can also use the Iris Encyclopedia to find irises of interest you don’t yet know about!

One approach is to look at the award winning irises.  The Iris Encyclopedia has an Awards page that lists the various Medals and Cups that irises can win.  Most of the major American Medals on this page already direct you to pages with pictures of the irises that have won that Medal.  For example, the American Dykes Medal shows all the winners from its inception in 1927 to the present.  The Awards page also has links to winners, and runners up, by year.  The Awards 2011 page shows or lists these for the most recent year.

You can also find unusual irises by looking at the Novelty Iris page.  These are irises that have properties differing from the mainstream, or did when they were first introduced.  These are those currently with pages:

A reminder – all of the Iris Encyclopedia is a work in progress.  For some of these pages, the iris names are not yet linked.  You can help by registering so you can add such links.  Also, your observations on specific irises performance can help improve the Iris Encyclopedia.