HYACINTH OR IRIS? 65 



reticulata, but whether or no they were truly so I 

 cannot say. 



Among the more striking of the flowers to 

 be seen in Holland now, Iris susiana certainly 

 deserves mention. It is not a bulb iris but a 

 spreading rhizome, in growth more like the Iris 

 germanica, though in appearance quite unlike. 

 It was introduced into Holland somewhere 

 about 1570, and has been grown there practically 

 without development or variation ever since, 

 but the days of its market popularity are com- 

 paratively recent. Twenty years ago it is 

 doubtful if there were fifty of the strange 

 flowers (they look rather as if they were made 

 of Japanese newspaper) to be found outside the 

 Dutch gardens. Certainly in England they were 

 then very little known. And yet Parkinson, 

 writing in 1629, gives them an important place 

 among the then known irises. There can be 

 no doubt whatever that the Iris susiana of 

 to-day is what he calls the Great Turkey 

 Flowerdeluce, "the roots whereof," he tells us, 

 "have been sent out of Turkey divers times 

 among other things, and it would seem that 

 they have had their original from about Sufis, 

 a chief city of Persia." His description of the 



