THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 121 



other plants arc in Howcr. TIr' red fruits which follow the 

 flowers are ahout the size of a cherry and are edihle, hence 

 the connnon name of ilie plant. — /:</.] 



Gi,Ai)i()i,KS. — l\eferrin<( to the diflicuhN nio.sl peo[)le 

 have with the [jliiral of (iladiolus, Robert A. Benton writes: 

 People who know little Latin, and their number is increas- 

 ing ever\- day. ha\e hard work to use the Latin plural 

 Ciladioli :md make a clumsy hybrid word gladioluses in- 

 >tead. ( )thers understand gladiolus to be the plural and 

 change it to gladiolas and make the singular gladiola. All 

 this clum>iness and misunderstanding would come to an end 

 if it were agreed to cut ofT the Latin ending and make a 

 good Lnglish word, gladiol, with its plural gladiols. Such 

 anglicising has been done with many words, why not with 

 this?" [In the case of numerous foreign w'ords, the genius 

 of our language inclines us to make a plural by adding lis 

 and thus we have convolvuluses, narcissuses and gladioluses. 

 W^e commonly speak of crocuses instead of croci but the glad- 

 iolus fancier endeavors to avoid such forms bv speaking of 

 his plants as gladioli. There is. however, good authority 

 for the use of gladiole as suggested by Mr. Benton; indeed. 

 Lobelia Dortnianna is often known as the water gladiole. 

 Sticklers for accuracy are fond of rei)eating that the accent 

 of gladiolus should fall on the second syllable but in gladi- 

 ole the accent is on the first syllable and therefore nearer to 

 common usage which in spite of frequent correction still 

 holds to gladiol-us. It might be well for those who write 

 of the species of Gladiolus to call them gladioles and in time 

 we might avoid the use of gladiolas entirely. — Ed.] 



Iris ensata. — The little species of Iris from the Far 

 East, known as /. cnsata is not likely to prove attractive to 

 the iris fancier, for its flowers are small purple afifairs which 

 suggest these of our common blue flag {Iris versicolor). The 



