Growing in my garden for several years, an iris of good quality produced purple flowers with yellow-bearded falls. During the past season, most of the flower stalks of the plant also made flowers true to type.
However, one of the rhizome branches had white flowers, tinged slightly with purple, and another one had flowers, each of which was half white and half purple.
There was a sharp line of demarcation between the two parts of these flowers extending from top to bottom, including the standards and the falls. The falls of both types of flowers were yellow-bearded.
Each stalk of the rhizome bore a single flower stalk with three flowers. The rhizome branches were joined, and hence there can be no doubt regarding the origin of the different kinds of flowers.
When a mutation occurs in a part of a plant, and there are present two genetically different tissues, as in the flower of the iris, which is half white and half purple, the plant is known as a chimera.
Chimeras sometimes appear in many plants, including certain canna varieties, geranium, ivy, snapdragon, rubber plant, weigela, and four o’clock.
44659 by W. N. Steil