So I bought some dutch iris corms at Home Despot and I'm ashamed to admit that I succumbed to a really tacky marketing ploy. Some marketing geniuses somewhere have decided that the one thing buyers of irises are looking for is more sex appeal. I bought three types of irises, and their names are (I'm not joking) Rock Star, Aggressively Forward, and Dangerous Mood.
The colors look fun and a bit wild, but are they serious? Have they really done some sort of focus group of iris buyers and determined that what they really want is some sexytime? I mean, I bought them because it cracked me up in the store, but these names really seem geared towards a teen market, and unless teens have changed a lot since I was one, they're usually not interested in irises. In fact, it's the rare teen who's interested in plants at all. I'm guessing that even for teens with green thumbs, irises are not high on their list of edgy and exciting plants.
I could maybe see sexing up the names of already alluring tropicals and exotics, but irises just do not seem like an ideal subject for this particular tactic. Maybe you could create cool names for new colors of fritillaria--that name already seems kind of dirty to me, and it's an awesome and dramatic looking plant in the garden. But irises are like lilacs and delphiniums--very nice, but also very old fashioned plants that really don't need names better suited to cheap nail polish. What's next, hostas with names like Hey There Hot Stuff or begonias in new shades ranging from Garter Belt to Heaving Bosom?
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