The Origins of The American Iris Society Check Lists
by anner M. Whitehead
Among the goals of the American Iris Society (AIS) at its founding in January, 1920, indeed one of the motivating forces leading to that founding, was to confer order upon the names of the garden irises.
William Rickatson Dykes’ monograph, The Genus Iris, published in 1913 by Cambridge University Press, was adopted by the new society as its botanical authority, but the nomenclature of the horticultural varieties was understood to be in disarray.
This condition had apparently prevailed at least since 1851, when Boston nurseryman Joseph Breck in The Flower Garden; or Breck’s Book of Flowers, commented, “There are many other fine Iris in cultivation with which there has been such a hocus-pocus game played by the florist, that it is impossible to tell their origin.” The muddled names in his own book confirm the validity of Breck’s concerns.
Confusion persisted through the latter decades of the nineteenth century, decades in which bearded irises waned in popularity in North America and Europe while newly discovered Iris species and the exotic Japanese irises rose to prominence, accompanied by their own nomenclature challenges.
Then, toward the turn of the new century, interest in hardy perennials generally began to reawaken. As irises became an object of study and development in informed gardening circles in the USA and abroad, it became apparent that the problem had continued to smolder. Vernacular names abounded. Many named varieties were remarkably similar. Some people even suggested that the situation was exacerbated by wholesalers renaming older cultivars to meet, and fan, the growing demand for novelties. In any case, by the second decade, it was common knowledge that the names of many irises in trade were dubious.
This situation was not unique to Iris. In 1923, reflecting efforts to address the needs of the commercial horticulture community and its customers, the American Joint Committee on Horticultural Nomenclature published a reference book called Standardized Plant Names. The preface to the first edition, as quoted in the revised edition of 1942, reads:
“The American Joint Committee on Horticultural Nomenclature was formed in 1915 by committees of the American Association of Nurserymen and of the Ornamental Growers Association.
“Purposes: As first constituted, the stated purpose of the Committee was to ‘make buying easy’ by bringing about so far as practicable, the consistent use of a single standardized ‘scientific’ name, and a single standardized ‘common’ name for every tree, shrub, and plant in American commerce . . .
“To establish . . . A well-organized mechanism for the registration and identification of horticultural varieties and the adoption of standard rules of nomenclature for the guidance of those naming horticultural varieties.”
In 1917, this committee had issued a Statement of the Problem in which some known causes of confusion, ranging from learned disagreements among botanists to concatenating errors among nurserymen, were discussed at length and the consequences thereof stated, thus: “the plantsman and buyer become perplexed and discouraged, and proper interest is not awakened. This often results in the over-use of the commoner and less worthy trees and plants, to the exclusion of many beautiful things.”
Clearly, if Iris was to be elevated to a position of prominence commensurate with the enthusiasm of the founders of the new American Iris Society, something earnest, authoritative, and comprehensive was going to have to be done about the notorious names mess, and sooner rather than later.
Many people involved in the AIS were also associated with the American Peony Society. Beginning early in the century, this group achieved considerable success in sorting the confused nomenclature of the genus Paeonia, with much attention focused on direct visual comparison of plants and blossoms grown in special test gardens established at Cornell University. These people were mindful of what might be accomplished for Iris, and, the Great War now behind them, they directed their attention to the task.
In June, 1919, John C. Wister, who would become the first president of the AIS, began compiling from diverse sources a “check list” of the names of Iris varieties. Additions were contributed by Robert S. Sturtevant, later the first editor of the AIS, by the distinguished nurseryman E. H. Krelage of the Netherlands, who had inherited a remarkable collection of horticultural ephemera, and many others. The working “check list,” maintained in typewritten form, eventually went through six revisions.
In January, 1922, a version of the revised list comprised solely of the names of those irises believed to be currently in commerce, with a few known synonyms thereof, was published by the AIS as its Bulletin Number 4. This was prepared by the Society specifically for Standardized Plant Names, and publication to the members was underwritten by several prominent commercial iris growers, among them Lee Bonnewitz of Ohio, Jennett Dean of California, Bertrand Farr of Pennsylvania, Grace Sturtevant of Massachusetts, the Peterson Nursery of Chicago, and the Rainbow Iris Gardens of Minnesota.
Additions and corrections to Bulletin Number 4 were solicited from its readers, and, these having been mulled and culled, the final revision was published in October, 1923, as AIS Bulletin Number 8, formatted as it had appeared in Standardized Plant Names.
The 1920s were a productive decade. New, genetically complex, modern irises were introduced into trade by hybridizers in the USA and abroad. Classification systems for Iris were debated, especially at the first International Conference on the Iris, convened in Paris in 1922. Consensus in this matter would prove elusive, but the AIS proceeded purposefully forward. Seminal publications geared toward the general reader also appeared, notably USDA Farmers’ Bulletin 1406: Garden Irises, by B. Y. Morrison (1926), Ella Porter McKinney’s Iris in the Little Garden (1927), and John C. Wister’s The Iris (1927). AIS test gardens were planted, and the process of sorting out and evaluating cultivars, new and old, began.
The AIS also established a Registrar’s office, with Charles Gersdorff as Registrar, and Ethel Anson S. Peckham as Recorder. They sent forth a flurry of correspondence inquiring about the histories of nurseries, hybridizers, and irises. A reference collection of commercial catalogs was assembled, and books and periodicals in private collections and horticultural libraries were pored over for all meaningful references to Iris, some dating to the Renaissance.
Throughout the 1920s, then, as irises rose to unprecedented popularity in North America and Europe, among the most pressing goals of the new AIS was to ascertain which varieties circulating under different names were, in fact, the same plant, and to determine which, among a murky and churning sea of Iris names were original, and thus legitimate, so that each Iris cultivar, past, present, and future, might carry one “approved” name which identified it uniquely.
A compilation of the fruits of the decade’s activity appeared in 1929 as the American Iris Society Alphabetical Iris Check List, edited by Mrs. Peckham. The book contains about twelve thousand names of “species, forms of species, horticultural varieties, and synonyms,” introduced by useful notes. Approved names carry brief coded descriptions, including a reference to a color-based classification system devised by the nurseryman F. X Schreiner of Minnesota, which had been introduced in Wister’s book.
The intent of the Society in issuing the Check List, as explained by President Wister in his introduction, was, “to publish all that is known about Iris names that have appeared in gardening literature during the last hundred or more years. . . . make it so easy for those who introduce new varieties, to avoid name duplication and confusion, that those who persist in this practice in the future may well be branded as either ignorant, careless or deliberate deceivers.” Moreover, he asserted, “We believe that this present work will stand for many years as the most complete book of reference on the Iris.”
And so it did stand as the most complete and authoritative work of its kind until publication of the American Iris Society 1939 Alphabetical Iris Check List, again compiled and edited by Mrs. Peckham. This, as she tells us in her preface, contains some nineteen thousand names, with the increase reflecting registration of new cultivars, the fruits of ongoing research, and corrections of earlier literature. Not surprisingly, it proved too exhaustive a document to be included in the new Standardized Plant Names.
The 1939 Check List subsumes and corrects the 1929 Check List. Brief, but useful, notes on hybridizers, botanists, publications, and commercial nurseries introduce the nearly six hundred pages of densely abbreviated material. Synonyms and muddled names are clarified, and coded bibliographical citations, notes on awards, and pedigrees, where known, are included. Although there are documented errors– clerical errors, errors of fact, errors of judgment– and probably errors as yet undiscovered, it is generally agreed that the level of accuracy is high.
Few single volume horticultural reference works can claim to make available so remarkable a quantity of fascinating information as does the 1939 Alphabetical Iris Checklist. In his introduction, Dr. Harry H. Everett, President of the AIS at its publication, described it as “a book of high adventure in the field of beauty, a record of hopes achieved, and a guide to Rainbow’s end.”
As the world emerged from the Second World War, there was renewed interest in developing a standard for the naming of garden plants, a new set of rules distinct from the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature which serves the scientific community. In 1952, William T. Stearn, representing the Royal Horticultural Society at the International Botanical Congress in Sweden, proposed such a standard, and, in 1953, The International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants was published.
The Code is administered as voluntary treaty under the aegis of the United Nations’ commerce committee, with designated groups or individuals in participating countries overseeing specific plant genera, or portions thereof. These groups and individuals are the International Cultivar Registration Authorities.
In 1955, the AIS, having long demonstrated its commitment to maintaining “a well-organized mechanism for the registration and identification of horticultural varieties,” was asked to accept the responsibility of serving as International Cultivar Registration Authority for all non-bulbous cultivars of the genus Iris, an honor it carries to this day.
Please note: The AIS Check Lists are available to purchase through the AIS Storefront section of the AIS website. For full details on these publications please go to the AIS Storefront.
AIS CHECK LISTS: Each of these are books that provide a ten year compilation of iris registrations and introductions (R&I).
1939 Ten year compilation of registrations, 1930-1939
1949 Ten year compilation of registrations, 1940-1949
1959 Ten year compilation of registrations, 1950-1959
1969 Ten year compilation of registrations, 1960-1969
1979 Ten year compilation of registrations, 1970-1979
1989 Ten year compilation of registrations, 1980-1989
1999 Ten year compilation of registrations, 1990-1999
2009 Ten year compilation of registrations, 2000-2009
2019 Ten year compilation of registrations, 2010-2019
For 2019 to current the registration information is published yearly as single year Registrations and Introductions booklets for reference use until the next 10 year compilation is published.
AIS registrations are available digitally to AIS eMembers through the AIS Register found in the eMembers area of the website. Login to view the complete AIS registration database.