In 2013, I crossed an Immortality Iris with a "Purple Mom/Black Dad" Iris, and I was successful. I got a seed pod, I winter-sowed them and posted a picture of them growing the next spring/early summer.
During Spring 2015, quite a few flowers came up.
I started documenting the flowers coming up...
...and all of them were purple...
What's this?!
It was the only "white" one to come up and I was completely obsessed with it. Unfortunately around this time, I caught something bad. All I remember is that there were a lot of pollen flying around and then all of a sudden I had a fever, a lot of sweating, and after a week of that, a cough moved in and then went deep into my lungs. That was a nightmare that lasted for way too long. I even went out with a paint pen and scribbled on the leaves so that when I got better, I'd be able to find it and separate it.
By the time I got better, all the original leaves in the pot had died down and gave way to new leaves. I had no idea which one I wanted to dig up, and pretty much wrote the flower off as dead and gone.
Then cue 2016. For some reason the garden did not bloom much this year. I had very few amaryllis blooms, as well as a handful of iris blooms scattered around. I don't know if it was because winter wasn't cold enough? I don't know.
Then to my complete and utter surprise...
Only one iris bloomed in this pot and it was the one that I thought was long gone.
I was absolutely determined to separate it this time while I still can. After the flowers ran their course and shriveled up, I got it repotted in a pot all by itself.
There were two teeny, tiny rhizomes attached to it so I'm hoping it'll eventually take over the whole pot with a bunch of new rhizomes to carry on the legacy.