Early Irises 



and careful selection should give us larger forms. I am 

 watching a family of yearling babes, and hoping the leaves 

 are increasing in width sufficiently to promise good results. 



What I imagine must be the type form, because it is 

 the commonest in cultivation, has medium-sized flowers 

 of a distinctly warm lilac : perhaps it is not going too far 

 to say they are flushed with rose, after the manner of the 

 compilers of catalogues. I never expect them to flower 

 until New Year's Day has come and gone, so in making a 

 planting for picking purposes it will save time and trouble 

 by keeping the early flowering sorts together, for except 

 during spells of settled mild weather, which Heaven knows 

 are as rare as spare moments, it is best to pick the buds a 

 day before they open, and at that time they are not very 

 conspicuous, as the under sides of the falls are then of a 

 pale, dingy buff shade, slightly tinged with greyish lilac at 

 their edges, and are very hard to distinguish from browned 

 tips of old leaves. In consequence of this it is often 

 necessary, not only to examine the clumps at close 

 quarters, but to lift the longer leaves with one's hand, and 

 all that means stooping, and a gardener's back never 

 requires more of that sort of physical drill than is 

 absolutely necessary, neither is it good for his temper to 

 hunt over clumps of late flowering forms before the reward 

 for so doing is due. 



This plan of inconspicuous colouring for unexpanded 

 buds and closed flowers has been adopted by many winter- 

 flowering plants. It would seem they are cryptically 

 coloured for the purpose of avoiding observation and 

 consequent destruction by enemies. Thus many of the 

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