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; For those that may be relatively new to the genus let me point out a few terms that will be helpful. The flower of and Iris is quite unusual in that there are two cycles of Tepals (petals/sepals) that are commonly distinguished. The inner cycle is the standards which usually rise upwards as in Flags. The outer cycle is the falls which as the name implies hang downward. Everyone knows stamens when they see them but the female structures are petaloid style arms that overarch the stamens and have confused many a first time hybridizer. The stigma is a lip on the end of this style arm. This flower structure is unique to Iris and a few close relatives, Moraea, Dietes, etc. The Genus offers around 200-250 species and most if not all are interesting garden plants. The traditional classification system provides us with various sections and series under the Genus but new DNA research has more or less turned on its head how these categories are organized. Only a preliminary report has been in publication but I will try to give a brief summary and then return to using Mathews classification since it is available to everyone and we can all be on the same page. The old classification basically separated the genus by winter storage organs, Roots, Stems(Rhizomes) and Bulbs. The largest of these groups, the Rhizomes, was divided into three groups those with beards, those without beards, and those with crests. These are structures on the falls which guide the pollinating bees into three pollen tubes each formed by a fall and a style arm. These tubes mean that each flower functions as three separate flowers. The bearded group is divided again into plants with arillate seeds and plants with seeds without arils. The new classification will separate the beardless rhizome Iris as a group called wetland Iris from all the others which seem to be more closely related and termed Dryland Iris. This means that the rhizome group is split apart with the bearded being more closely related to the bulbous than previously thought. In the past there were two bulbous groups the Reticulatas and the Xiphiums(dutch Iris) which were thought to have evolved independently, there is some evidence that they may have shared a common ancestor. Three genera that were formerly separated from Iris are now included in the genus; Hermodactylus, Belamcanda, and Pardanthopsis. The crested Irises are a very artificial group which is still confused but each of these species should fall either in the bearded group or in the beardless group. Since it is such a large topic I am attaching a handout that I use in my lectures that lists most of the species. I am still in the process of revising this piece so not everything in it is according to my gospel but it may be useful for our discussion. Please feel free to make a personal copy but don't distribute it as I want to use it in further lectures. I always have to redo some of the formatting on this file when I open it so I hope you will be able to get a reasonable copy, good luck. Note from Mary Sue: This came to me instead of the list since it had an attachment. I have sent his attachment to the wiki. I am afraid it is a rather large file so it will take a little time to open depending on your connection. I couldn't change it to a html file for everyone to see without losing the formatting. But it looks like a treasure of information: http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/files/… I have also turned Bob's message into text and am redirecting it to the list. Mary Sue