Thank you very much, Sherry! I loved reading something new by Henry Mitchell.
Interesting that he argues for at least 25% yellows, warns against too many whites or dark irises, and advocates against too many reds and browns. (I dislike browns in general, and I have few red irises because of the mud. If "modern" red irises look muddy to me, I hate to think what they looked like back in his day.) I am tempted to count up the irises (or at least only the TBs) to see roughly how much of each color I have.
I also thought his comments about the old doctor's seedling interesting. I still have some old daylily seedlings of mine that I am loathe to give up (well, truth to tell, I am generally loathe to triage any of the daylily seedlings, but these have survived several triages now, and date back to 2005 or thereabouts).
Yes, I have better seedlings, but there is something about these 2 oldest seedlings.
One is a red with good color, but more importantly it has some degree of sunfastness (a problem with red and purple daylilies). Even though it is far superceded in terms of form and probably budcount by more modern cultivars, and the foliage is a bit coarse (it is a tetraploid), I'd honestly register the thing simply because the bloom generally opens well enough and has that good color (with a nice throat, and a tiny bit of a white wire rim) and the sunfastness. That it is relatively rust resistant is also a plus. (The reason that every year, I look at it and decide NOT to, is that one of the petals has a distressing tendency to sometimes "tongue" (like sticking your tongue out), which is a fault.)
Parentage is BAMBOO SPITFIRE x JUSTIN BRENT
The other seedling is a sometimes-polymerous diploid yellow, with a large flower. The reason I don't register THAT one is because that it is not highly polymerous, the bud count is low, it generally does not rebloom (maybe it did one year), and the flower size is disproportionate to the relatively short stalk. But yet... I like it.
Parentage is a previous seedling of mine (SPARKING OPAL x FOUR STAR) x STARRY DAY
It'll be interesting to see how long I end up holding onto various IRIS seedlings. You all have seen my few more recent ones, but I still have one of my first, dating back maybe around 20 years now... either from BUSY BEING BLUE x SECOND FIDDLE or it's reciprocal cross (there was landscape construction going on at the time and tags got lost or confused).
