What's New In The Garden? Iris albicans...
				I took this photo on Saturday, March 6, 2010.  This is the first bloom of this iris that I got from Lynda and Leroy last Spring in 2009.  It has all white petals and sepals except for the bottom falls sepal that is half bluish-purple.  At first I thought it was going to be blue and thought Leroy's had given me some blue irises he had found, but this one opened up this way as a mutant surprise.  Leroy then told me that he had given me white irises that he had found growing wild.  I suppose this is a white iris called Iris albicans. It is planted in the back by the arbor by the kitchen and I could see it out the kitchen window this morning.  There are two more buds on another bunch on the other side.  We shall see what they turn out to look like.  I'll try to photo every 30 minutes tomorrow to get a time-lapsed opening of them. Now, I'm wondering if these are the irises I got from Jerry's mama and daddy's old place.  We had such a good time going there last year and I picked up some of those irises while they weren't blooming.  We'll have to make a trip over there to see them in bloom. All the parts of the flower are called the perianth and are made up of the corolla and the calyx.  Where you would expect the calyx like sepals to be are called the FALLS.  The three STANDARDS correspond to a normal flower's petals.  There are 3 STYLE ARMS which are so different from the normal STYLE that leads from the stigma to the ovary, because they actually look like petals.  On the style arm you can see a STIGMATIC LIP which serves as the STIGMA. The falls serves as a landing area for pollinators and on bearded irises, they have a beard that consists of fuzz for the pollinator to hang on to as they enter the flower in search of nectar. (Refer to here for a better description of the parts of the iris.)
		Tomorrow I need to photograph the Speedy Gonzales rose, which is a climbing Martha Gonzales rose, that I pruned back severely this year.  The new petals are a gorgeous maroon.  The information about this plant says that it was discovered by Greg Grant in San Antonio by a hospital where Jerry Parsons was dying.  Now, Jerry Parson hasn't died.  And my Speedy Gonzales, which is supposed to be a heavy spring bloomer, barely bloomed at all last year and had very few repeat blooms.  We'll see what happens this year with all the trimming and new growth. Information on pruning climbing roses state that you should get two bloom times...first on the old canes and then one the new growth.  There was very little of the old canes left, so we'll see.  Now it's time to get those canes trained horizontally...Info here.