Rbodora 
JOURNAL OF 
THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 
Vol. 5 June, 1903 No. 54 
THE IDENTITY OF IRIS HOOKERI AND THE ASIAN 
I. SETOSA. 
M. FosTER. 
[EDITORIAL NorE.— The discovery by Dr. G. G. Kennedy two years ago 
at Cutler, Maine, of the unique Zris Hookeri, Penny, formerly known only 
from the coast of eastern Canada, Labrador and Newfoundland, has drawn 
much attention to that handsome plant.! As a result of recent observations, 
the range of the species has been more clearly defined than heretofore, and 
we now know Z. Hookeri on sea-beaches and headlands from Mallijak (Ham- 
ilton Inlet), Labrador, to the Baie des Chaleurs, New Brunswick, and up the 
St. Lawrence to Saguenay and Kamouraska Counties, Quebec; on New- 
foundland, the Magdalen Islands, and Prince Edward Island; and from 
Sydney, Cape Breton, to Jonesport, Maine. With the attention of New Eng- 
land botanists so recently directed to this northern Iris, it was an especially 
happy chance which led Miss Mary A. Day, Librarian of the Gray Herba- 
rium, to discover among some papers of the late Sereno Watson a manuscript 
note upon this plant from Sir Michael Foster, the distinguished secretary of 
the Royal Society and for twenty years Professor of Physiology at Trinity 
College, Cambridge. This note which its author permits us to publish was 
addressed to Dr. Watson shortly before his death.] 
In an interesting note in Botanical Gazette, xii. p. 99, May, 1887, 
on “Our *tripetalous ' species of Iris,” you shew that Z Hookeri has 
priority as a name for the Canadian tripetalous species. I have 
several times received plants under the name * Z. tridentata,” clearly 
not specimens of Walter's plant [Z. zrz?eza/a], but so identical in all 
respects with Z. se/osa, Pallas, that, though some of them were said 
to come from Canada, I thought there must have been some mistake, 
and that what I had received were simply specimens of the Asian Z. 
setosa. 
Two years ago, however, Mr. James Fletcher of the Agricultural 
Department, Ottawa, was so very kind as to send me ripe full cap- 
sules and living roots of the tripetalous Iris growing at Dalhousie, 
! See Kennedy, RHODORA, iv. 24, and Collins, ibid, 179, t. 39. 
