The Louisiana Iris Garden is home to numerous iris cultivars registered with the American Iris Society. Many of these are Joe Mertzweiller's registrations, but the work of other hybridizers is also represented.  

Perhaps surprisingly, there is a large contingent of beautiful but unidentified irises.  One reason for this is simply that the original core of plants in the Garden were provided by Joe Mertzweiller, who operated a major hybridizing program.  At the time of the donation, many of Joe's plants were seedlings under evaluation. Some might have been registered eventually and most have the look of irises of a quality one might expect of named cultivars.

Some older registered irises are hard to identify simply because they are not familiar to people today.  On two occasions, the Garden was toured by visitors attending a convention of the Society for Louisiana Irises (see left). Even this hard core group of iris enthusiasts could not connect a name with the many unidentified plants.