IRIS 203 
and lined and streaked and splashed and mottled with 
inferior ink. 
As for Iris Korolkowi, this alone among its capricious 
kindred has really stirred my love and enthusiasm. I 
can make a manful stand against the charms of Iris 
paradoxa, can even bear up against the beauty of 
Iris Lorteti with not more than a shooting pang of envy, 
but I collapsed utterly on my first sight of Iris Korolkowt. 
This, in its best forms (the inferior, ordinary ones are 
dull and comparatively uninteresting), is a_ slender 
grower, rising to a couple of feet at the most, and bear- 
ing one or two elongated, gracious flowers, whose colour 
is an indescribable mixture of fawn and brown, with the 
clearest, gentlest, electric blue. I would go any lengths 
to grow this, but I never have. Like all its kin, it 
clamours for light, limy loam, fierce drainage, hot 
summers, and dry winters—a hopeless demand to make 
onme. But, given these requirements, none, I think, of 
the Regelias and Oncocyclus groups can be fairly accused 
of half-hardiness; genuine half-hardies are Iris sinenis, 
or fimbriata, and Iris Milesix, of which fimbriata, common 
enough in Japan, is an enlargement of my heart’s best 
love, gracilipes, and Milesii, a diminished, inferior form 
of tectorum. As a matter of fact, as fimbriata is common 
in Japan, it should be quite possible, if it were worth 
while, to get plants from some cold district, and so make 
sure of having it perfectly hardy in England. 
Dainty Jris nepalensis, of which Mr. Eden Phillpotts 
writes with such enthusiasm, I have never yet possessed : 
nor, if I did, do I believe I should succeed in keeping it 
for long. As for the new Regelio-Oncocyclus hybrids, I 
have read flaming advertisements, I have ticked off their 
names amorously in high-price catalogues, but I have not 
hitherto bought any ; their names are classical and fitting, 
which is a rare mercy in the garden (O namer of these 
