The AIS would be foundet 1920. In 1929 the first Check List of an alphabetical collection of all knowed iris at this time was edited. Revised and supplemented was published the next book in 1939. This contained about 19,000 iris. Unfortunately, the information about the iris in this Checklist contained no detailed description and size but only the name of the breeder, the breeding year and a color code. Often this data are missing completely or partially.

At that time, bearded iris are only distinguishes between high and small bearded iris. The actually used terminology, IB, BB and MTB for the half-sized, as well as SDB for the small and MDB for the very small iris did not yet exist at that time. This resulted in problem, that once the same iris is labeled as a Tall Bearded and sometimes as Intermedia Bearded.

Since there initially was no official registry for iris, the first checklists are compiled from every existing information (sales list of breeders and dealers, books, periodicals and  societies,...). Because of inaccuracies (The dealers also at that time took it not so accurat), misspellings and different sources, some iris were assigned several breeders. Also some iris are recorded under several names. So the checklist of 1939 includes thousands corrections compared to the 1929 list.

Due to various information many Iris been edited as no longer existent and marked as deleted entries.
 

Note:
In my eyes, here begins something very stupid: names of Iris, which are marked to be deleted, are released and another new iris will registered under the same name. Since many of the "deleted" irises are still exist somewhere, sometimes it comes to unnecessary misunderstandings and confusions. Alone there are exist 6 Mandarin, at least 4 of them are in different collections and some are even known in trade.

Often it also occurs that breeders revoke its registration because another seedling from the same breeding line looks relatively the same, but with a better quality, and this will registered then under the same name. As long as the first seedling was never impart, that's no problem - but woe if only one rhizome from the first seedling is on the way!

Incidentally, there is no legal requirement to register iris varieties. In Germany this is common until from the 1950s. For this reason, in many gardens you find nameless unregistered iris cultivars - what sometimes the collecting iris enthusiast, who search for a name for his iris, raise the one or other tears. Bad Iris

In the age of internet it is very easy to get iris from around the world. Also in the Eastern European and former Soviet Union countries they gives any good and suceed breeders of iris. This iris have mostly unspeakable name for us, but sometimes also names in english . Many of them are not registered by AIS - anyway I can recommend the iris from this breeders.