196 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 
bosniaca, as well as two others, whose very names have 
long since perished from my memory. ‘These are for the 
dry rock-garden; so are intermedia and pretty violet- 
flagged Fieberi, of small stature and splendid bloom ; 
and all the Rohais hybrids, too ;—in which, for the rest, 
I am disappointed, their growth being very lavish and 
leafy, their flowers rather dull and undistinguished by 
comparison. 
But before I go on to the Bog-Irises themselves, it will 
be but common decency for me to find places on my 
bank for the large Flag-Irises. Germanica itself—the 
old common type-plant, with its tall stems and its great 
glorious purple flowers—is worthy of our humblest grati- 
tude ; it is no less amiable in good soil, high on the slope 
above the bog, than amid the sooty, cat-hunted wastes of 
a London Square. It has produced innumerable varieties 
and hybrids, of course, intermarrying freely with its close 
cousins in the bearded group; but none of the children, 
to my taste, surpass the robust imperial splendour of the 
type. Indeed many of them grow poor and indetermin- 
ate in colour, developing a small, wizened fall, far inferior 
to the flopping purples of germanica, so amply grace- 
ful in design as well as magnificent in colour. For the 
bronzy, yellowish, fulvous, mottled hybrids of germanica 
I have no use. Jnnocenza, white as its name denotes, is 
beautiful, and others, of old raising, have full form and 
fine colour. Madame Chéreau, the edges of whose snowy, 
frilled falls are pencilled most exquisitely with pale azure, 
is another beauty, long established, but not to be ousted 
by new-comers. Yet Madame Chéreaw is not a germanica 
pur sang; and, besides, for all her dainty loveliness, has 
not the full, unhusbanded length and stretch of petal 
that marks the best of the German Irises. 
Germanica, however, is flanked by two formidable 
rivals in florentina and pallida. So well known and well 
