28 



that the want of success which I have had with it leads me to 

 infer that it, like the English Iris, needs more moisture in spring 

 than my circumstances will admit. 



Most of the Xiphium group go to seed freely, and the seed, 

 as a rule, germinates readily ; by far the greater part of the seed 

 sown in the summer as soon as ripe sprouts in the following 

 spring. The seed of I. xiphium starts very early, and when 

 the seed is sown in the open the young seedlings are apt to be 

 damaged, thrust out of the ground, and otherwise injured, or even 

 killed, by late frost ; hence, to secure a full crop of plants from a 

 batch of seeds, some protection is advisable. But when seed is 

 plentiful a little loss is of no great moment, and my practice 

 now is to sow in the open in a prepared bed, and to let the 

 seedlings remain until the bulbs are for the most part ready for 

 flowering. The seed of /. xiphioides is much later in germinating, 

 does not start until spring is fairly advanced, and hence does not 

 need any protection at all ; care, however, should be taken that 

 the young seedlings do not suffer from drought. 



Iris tuberosa. 



I may, perhaps, here say a few words about a charming little 

 plant, which is not a bulbous Iris in the strict sense of the word, 

 and which, indeed, by some authors is not considered an Iris at 

 all, and which yet has certain affinities with the bulbous Irises of 

 which I have been speaking. I mean the plant with lovely 

 black and green flowers, known in some of its native homes as 

 " The Widow " (la vedova), and called by the majority of authors 

 Iris tuberosa (fig. 19), but by others Hermodactylus tuberosus. It 

 was separated by Salisbury as a distinct genus, with the name just 

 given, because the ovary is not, as in Iris, divided completely into 

 three chambers by three septa or partitions meeting in the 

 middle along the whole length of the organ ; the partitions are 

 imperfect, not meeting in the upper part of the ovary, which 

 thus consists of a single chamber, partly divided by the projecting 

 partitions. Otherwise all the characters of the plant are those 

 of an Iris ; and, since the lack of complete fusion of the partitions 

 of the ovary may occur accidentally in many specimens of 

 Iris, it seems unreasonable to lay such great stress 011 this 

 feature. I shall, therefore, continue to consider it as an Iris. 

 But, as I said, it is not strictly a bulbous Iris ; if you dig up a 



