Photo Courtesy of Brighton Park Iris

ORIGINATOR: Sydney Mitchell INTRODUCED: 1945 CLASS: Tall Bearded HEIGHT: 38" BLOOM SEASON: Early to Mid DESCRIPTION: S. yellow; F. yellow veined darker red. PARENTAGE: Sdlg. var. X var. (listed in checklist) Actual cross is: Gold Imperial X Menetrier AWARDS: None INTERESTING INFO: Some information regarding SANTA CRUZ by HIPS ID Chairman: Phil Edinger: In the 1940s, Mitchell got rather lazy when it came to registering parentages. SANTA CRUZ is "sdlg. var. X var." as mentioned in the checklist and some of his plicatas were registered as "plic. sdlg. X plic. sdlg" – equally vague. In the case of Santa Cruz, though, he may have had good reason for non-disclosure: it came from a 1925 cross! Parentage is Gold Imperial (diploid) X Menetrier (tetraploid). Apparently it was something he liked and kept, and in later years garden visitors wanted it, so he relented and named it – twenty years after the cross. Years ago, Keith Keppel located the Mitchell breeding records in San Francisco (at the Arboretum) and about twenty years after his initial foray into them we went there together to comb through them again. That's where all the "new" info comes from: straight from Mitchell.