212 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 
have certainly made a fine and permanent success of 
Iris Kaempferi. It is early days, as yet, perhaps, to say 
so much of Iris albo-purpurea, with its white variety ; but, 
as far as I can see, under the same treatment as I gave 
Kaempferi, these rare beauties are now advancing on the 
same happy way, and I look forward, this season, to their 
big white and purple blossoms. And last of all comes 
an Iris near sibirica, which I bought at a Night-Fair in 
Tokio, and which has since developed into two enormous 
bushes of narrow, flopping foliage, emitting from their 
thickets a sheaf of tall stalks with disproportionately 
large flowers, opulent, solid, creamy-pure. 
The Spanish and the English Iris are both bulbous, 
but of cheerfuller temper than any of their cousins from 
the Levant. However, except for light dry soils, in light 
dry climates, I would hardly recommend Jris xiphioeides as 
a certain perennial for the rock-garden. Far different is 
it with the gorgeous old English Iris, whose huge, deep 
azure flowers make the pride of many a cottage-garden. 
Iris Xiphion is, I believe, a southerner and Spaniard of 
very limited distribution, and yet this outlander has so 
happily established itself with us as to have acquired the 
ridiculous name of English Iris (while, by another ironical 
paradox, it is the Iris called germanica that is the Royal 
Lily of old France). Iris aon has many varieties in 
the way of colour, but none, to my mind, touches the com- 
mon midnight blue—which has the parties pride of being 
the most vigorous of the many vigorous forms of Xiphion. 
All it requires is to be let alone for ever and ever in any 
good garden loam ; and in crowded, rough corners of the 
rock-garden it makes a splendid patch of colour, which 
may punctually be relied on to appear each season with 
the coming of June. 
Xiphion and xiphioeides bring one back to the tricera- 
tops form of flower—the triple prong—as distinguished 
