American Iris Society

The American Iris Society (AIS, founded 1920) is an organization dedicated to sharing information about and sponsoring research on the iris, a temperate zone plant that is often cultivated for its showy flowers. A major goal in its early years was to bring order to the then-confused nomenclature of the genus Iris, especially garden iris species and cultivars. Its members comprise horticulturists, botanists, gardeners, plant breeders, and nursery owners.

The founding of the AIS was prompted by the growing popularity of irises as garden plants in America, spurred in part by an award-winning exhibit of iris cultivars at the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, in part by William Rickatson Dykes' landmark 1913 book The Genus Iris, and in part by a small flood of articles in popular magazines like Country Life.

The AIS was founded in January 1920, at a meeting hosted by the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG). Organizing efforts were led by horticulturist John Caspar Wister (first AIS president); James Boyd, president of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, who chaired the founding meeting; A. C. Beal, head of the NYBG's Department of Horticulture; iris breeder siblings Grace Sturtevant and Robert Sturtevant (first secretary of the AIS); horticulturist Louisa Boyd Yeomans King of the Garden Club of America; horticulturist Ethel Anson Peckham, who managed the Bronx Park Iris Trial Gardens; garden book author Louise Beebe Wilder; Mary Helen Wingate Lloyd, creator of an "iris bowl" garden in Pennsylvania; and others. Several founding members came from the world of peony fanciers, including Lee R. Bonnewitz, a nurseryman and president of the American Peony Society; W. F. Christman, secretary of the Northwestern Peony and Iris Society; and chemistry professor A.P. Saunders, who edited the bulletin of the peony society.

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