For August, 1922 



229 



The Iris Among the Ancients 



IN the remote tiivie of Greek mythology the Iris was a 

 gracious goddess, messenger of the gods, who by 



spreading out her scarf produced the rainbow. The 

 ancient Greeks, struck by the diversity of colors in the 

 perianth of the flowers of the plant which forms the sub- 

 ject of this article, gave to it the name of die charming 

 goddess who personified the rainbow. 



The Greek physician Dioscorides. of the first century 

 of the Christian era, declares moreover that the word 

 Iris signifies "rainbow"' ; the plant bearing this name, he 

 adds, owes it to the varied colors of its petals. 



At that period the Greeks and the Romans employed 

 the dried rhizomes of the Iris in perfumery and in medi- 

 cine. They made use of it to comixit coughs and colics, 

 against the bites of serpents, as a purgative, etc. Pliny 

 and Dioscorides point out that the rhizomes most esteemed 

 came from Illyria (/. ^crmaiiica) : in the second rank 

 were placed those from Macedonia (7. Horenthm), and 

 finally, in the last place, those from Lybia. Macedonia 

 and Corinth were then celebrated for their perfumed un- 

 guents. According to Pliny the better oil of Iris came 

 from Pamphilia : that from Cilicia also was very highly 

 esteemed. The German botanist, Sprengel, sees, in the 

 Iris of Dioscorides. the species gcriiiamca and iiorentina. 



If in the first century the rhizomes of the Iris were im- 

 ported into Italy the plant was already known there and 

 had a place m the gardens. Pliny states that it did not 

 enter into the making of garlands, probably because of 

 the fragility of the petals. He describes minutely the 

 ceremonial pulling up of the rhizomes, which were lifted 

 up toward the sky immediately they were taken from the 

 earth. 



On the contrary the Egyptians, in the Greco-Roman 

 period, who cultiv.ated the Iris sibirica, used it to make 

 garlands. 



What were the Irises cultivated by the Greeks and the 

 Romans? They cultivated, beyond doubt, the /. gernuin- 

 ka, native to central Europe, which grows in abundance 

 in a wild state in Dalmatia (ancient Illyria). It is evi- 

 dentlv this species, of which the colors recall the rainbow, 

 that brought to the genus its name. 



Acording to Pluckiger and Hanbury /. florcntiiia and 

 pallida (from the south-eastern parts of Europe) must 

 have been introduced into Italy in the Middle Ages. The 

 Italian agriculturist Crescenzi (T3th century) actually 

 treated of the white Iris and of the purple, and indicates 

 the maner of preserving the rhizomes. His contempo- 

 rary, the celebrated poet, Dante, author of the Diinnc 

 Comedy, reports that upon the ancient arms of the city 

 of Florence was a representation of a zdiitc Iris upon a 

 red escutcheon, which was, after the civil wars, changed 

 into red Iris upon a white escutcheon. The culture of 

 the /. iiorentina spread rapidly to such an extent that 

 Valerius Cordus complained, at the end of the sixteenth 

 century, that the Illyrian drug had been replaced by that 

 from Florence. A.ccording to the statement of Mattioli 

 the plant must have been naturalized in Tuscany in the 

 middle of the sixteenth century. Clusius claims that it 

 was rare in the gardens of the other countries. 



In the twelfth century, in Spain, the Arabian agricul- 

 turist Ibn-al-Awam described the culture of the Iris (Lit- 

 tle Violet-colored Lily), which multiplies from the roots 

 in May : the translator wrote in a note that this Iris, of 

 small stature, was probably the /. pmnila. The Arabian 

 physician Ibn-el-Beithar ( 13th Century) says that the 

 Irissa is the violet-colored Lily, and he points out its me- 

 dicinal properties. 



In France the culture of the Iris goes back certainly 

 to a remote period : the beauty and the oddness of its flow- 

 ers, the perfume of its dried rhizomes, employed since 

 time immemorial in domestic economy ( lixiviation, her- 

 aldry ) must have caused it to be admitted into gardens. 

 In the eighteenth century, under the name of Gladiolus 

 (in 1600) Olivier of Serres still wrote Gladiolus or Iris. 

 The emperor Charlemagne enjoined the cultivation of the 

 Iris upon his attendants. 



The flower is found represented upon the scroll work 

 of monuments of the Roman period and of the end of the 

 (]Iothic period. The flower of "Lys'' figured upon the 

 coats of arms of the kings of France, from the time of 

 Louis \TI in 1180 (it had been adopted by other royal 

 houses of Europe also and by a great number of families 

 belonging to the French nobility), does not reseinble a 

 fleur-de-lis. Modern authors see rather, in the golden 

 Lily of coats of arms, the yellow flower of the Iris pseii- 

 dacorus. 



It is then not rash to affirm that by the Middle Ages 

 the culture of the Iris had already been widely spread in 

 France In the sixteenth century the species known were 

 sufficiently nimierous. By consulting the works of bota- 

 nists of the time, up to G. Bauhin (Pinax 1623), we have 

 found, described or figured, the following Irises : 

 I. — Iris rhizomatous : 



(a) Apogon: /. fatidissima L., /. pseudaconts L. ; 

 /. graminea L. ; /. sibirica L. ; /. spuria L. 



(b) Oncocyclus: /. Siisiana L. 



(c) Pogoniris : L. ; /. aphylla L. ; I. germanica L. ; /. 

 iiorentina L. ; /. pallida Lam. ; /. pmnila L. ; /. 

 sqmdens L. ; /. sainbitcina L. ; /. variegata L. 



II. — Iris bulbous : /. alata Poir ; /. Xipliium L. ; /. xiph- 



ioides, Ehr. ; /. Sisyrineliinin L. ; /. jimeea L. 

 III. — Iris tuberous: /. tuberosa L. 



This is the total of twenty species. Thus, as witness 

 the works of Clusius and of G. Bauhin, where Lamark 

 found described several varieties of /. germanica and of 

 pnmila, the cultivation of these two species must be an- 

 cient. The Mourning Iris or /. susiana, so curious be- 

 cause of its form and its sombre coloring, native to Per- 

 sia, of which we reproduce the figure acocrding to Clusius, 

 was sent from Constantinople to Vienna in 1573 to this 

 botanist. The Iris from Persia (/. persica L.), bulbous, 

 is cited in 1629 by Parkinson. 



It is from the end of the sixteenth or from the begin- 

 ning of the seventeenth century that the culture of bul- 

 bous irises has been developed in Holland. Clusius, whom 

 Olivier of Serres (the Father of French Agriculture) sur- 

 named in 160O, the Father of Flowers, must have intro- 

 duced and propagated nmnerous species when he was in 

 Leyden. The attention of Dutch, English and Belgian 

 horticulturists was directed principally to the bulbous 

 species (/. xipliium and /. xiphioides) of which they ob- 

 tained, by sowing, numerous varieties. De Grace an- 

 nounced (Bon Jardinier, 1802) that in the eighteenth 

 century the Dutch were selling, by names and colors, vari- 

 eties of /. xipliium. 



In France, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 

 were cultivated, in the gardens, rhizomatous irises (/. 

 germanica, I. pumila, I. florentina. I. Susiana, etc.) and 

 bulbous irises (/. xipliium, tmder the name of Spanish 

 Iris, /. xiphioides, under the name of English Iris and 

 the Persian Iris). Irises with rhizomes were multiplied 

 from seed or, more often, by cutting up the rhizomes. A 

 (Continued on page 232) 



