of the long, admirable series of plant portraits known now as 

 the Botanical Magazine, and which is probably familiar to all 

 as the Persian Iris, Iris persica (figs. 20 and 21). It is, like 

 the members of the Euxiphion group, a bulbous Iris ; but the 

 bulb is composed not of two or three very fleshy coats, but of 

 several less stout coats, surrounded, as in Euxiphion, by mem- 



branous wrappings. If you take 

 the bulb up in summer, when the 

 foliage has died down, you will 

 find attached to the base of the 

 bulb a number of fleshy, finger- 

 like, but somewhat tapering roots, 

 each with a narrow 

 neck, easily broken at 

 its attachment to the 

 bulb. In the case of 

 purchased, stored bulbs 

 these conspicuous roots 

 have often been broken 

 off, and the bulb then 



does not differ in outward appearance very 

 markedly from a Euxiphion bulb ; but when 

 the ripened bulb is taken direct from the 

 ground these fleshy roots are always present. 

 If you study the history of the plant during 

 the yearly cycle of its life, you will find that, 

 as the foliage and bloom are developed, these 

 thick roots shrink, and finally disappear; 

 when the plant is at the height of its vege- 

 tation, only their shrivelled remains are to be 

 seen. But as the leaves are withering in the 

 ripening process, new roots of the same kind 



are formed - which become thick and stout > like 



the new bulb which is forming while the leaves 

 of the past season fade and depart. Obviously 

 these thick finger-like roots are, like the thickened coats of the 

 bulb itself, stores of nourishment for the coming plant. In Euxi- 

 phion the plant possesses such stores only in the thick coats of 

 the bulb itself ; in Iris persica the plant can fall back upon the 

 supplementary stores afforded by these peculiar thick, fat roots. 



flower). (Caparn.) 



