An Iowa Garden

I've never been a big fan of the practice of naming hybrid crosses as if they were a new species... the primrose world is probably the poster child for this confusing practice... only a real expert on primulas has the foggiest notion whether the name of the plant they are growing means it is a species or a hybrid. The innocent looking flower above is an example of how this appellation confusion arises. It is a cross between the genus pardanthopsis and the genus belamcanda (the latter being the blackberry lily). The cross was then registered as x pardancanda... well, so far so good, but as is inevitable the "x's" get dropped, so it became just pardancanda. Then, to honor one of the hybridists, it was registered as x pardancanda x norisii, which starts to get more confusing (not helped by the fact that the man being honored was Sam Norris, so it's sometimes spelled norrissii). Another x gets dropped, and now we have Pardancanda norisii Sangria (the above pictured hybrid)... I've also seen pardancanda spelled pardacanda and pardacandia.
Oh well, I've also never been a big fan of the garden curmudgeon genre of writing, which this entry so far seems to be an example of. Sangria is a newcomer to our garden, ceded one of the rare, fairly sunny spots, and it is growing like crazy and just starting to open its plum and gold flowers. They are large (three inches) and open flatter than the common blackberry lily, with quite attractive foliage. It is said to have a long blooming season, which always makes me suspicious that the plant being touted just opens its flowers sparsely and slowly, and so far that seems to be true... but there I go being curmudgeonly again. The plant is new and Sangria looks to be a keeper, and looks like it will be a popular passalong.