CHAPTER IV 



CULTIVATION 



A. CALIFORNIAN IRISES. 



SOME of these are difficult to grow and instructions that 

 will always ensure success can hardly be given. Mr 

 John Hoog writing in The Garden, Sept. 22, 1900, 

 p. 219, on /. Hartivegi says, " This, like the other Cali- 

 fornian Irises, may be easily raised from seeds sown in 

 the open in the autumn. The seedlings will appear next 

 year about May, and by the end of the summer will 

 have grown into nice young plants. In Messrs Van 

 Tubergen's nursery it has been found that curiously 

 enough these seedling plants will come through the 

 winter unscathed, if slightly protected, but that late 

 spring frosts about April or May prove fatal to them. 

 The seedling plants are consequently taken up in the 

 autumn and planted out in pits, where they are allowed 

 to stand unmoved for several years, and in our deep 

 rich sandy soil they succeed to perfection. Special care 

 is, of course, always taken that the sharp frosts which 

 occasionally occur about the end of March and the 

 beginning of April cannot touch the plants. Imported 

 plants from California of the whole of this group, with 

 the exception perhaps of /. Douglasiana, which is a very 

 robust species, seem to have very little chance of living 

 and becoming re-established in our climate. I may add 

 that this very peculiar Iris group cannot exist when 

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