202 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 
tenax and Iris versicolor are also grassy-leaved Americans, 
of which ¢enax, I fancy, is the more brilliant. But I 
have not yet done any great things with either. Jris 
virginica I mention only to contemn, and not because 
it belongs among these grass-leaved kinds. In foliage 
virginica is a straggling germanica; in flower it is too 
often a small, wizened tubergeniana, which, by con- 
trast with the rank, tall, leafy growth, is almost in- 
solently mean and poor. Jris hexagona, which I only 
grow in its superior form Lamancei, is a puzzle to me. 
This is a very beautiful species, I am told, of medium 
size. But I rather fancy it hails from Southern China, 
and its constitution is not altogether beyond suspicion. 
In any case I have had Lamancei now for many years, dwell- 
ing perpetually in the same favourable spot, and never 
advancing or retreating in prosperousness. It remains 
rigidly as it always was, and quite declines to flower. 
Of the Oncocyclus Irids I have already made my sad 
plaint. Nor have I a more rosy tale to tell of the 
Regelia section, which is supposed to be a shade easier 
and stronger than the Cushion Irises. Among these 
difficulties there are two, indeed, that I yearn to culti- 
vate successfully—but never for me is such a golden 
fate attainable. The two are susiana and Korolkowi. 
Susiana is the gigantic, flag-flowered Mourning Iris, 
which must have delighted Queen Elizabeth, so long has 
it been in culture over here. This gorgeous Levantine 
revels in hot, baked sand, and prospers, for instance, 
most riotously, I believe, in the archiepiscopal garden at 
Canterbury. But with me it will never do any good— 
although it is a compatriot of Niobe, with whose lachry- 
mose habits one would have thought my summers and 
winters so harmonious and sympathetic. Never, never, 
I fear me, shall I behold those vast, swelling flowers, 
exactly like inferior, flimsy blotting-paper, all blotched 
