IK IS VERXA. STRING IRIS, 47 



terminal growth of the underground runner for the season. 

 This also has buds at the base, but shows no disposition to 

 flower, and from this we may infer that the buds which do 

 flower are considerably developed before winter sets in, and this 

 too may be in favor of its early blossoming. Much may remain 

 to be learned about its habits. The opportunity to study its 

 behavior in a state of nature has not been favora])le, as it 

 inhabits woods in the South within a somewhat limited region, 

 and away from thickly setded places. Professor Wood says 

 only " Hilly woods in the interior of the Southern States; " and 

 Dr. Chapman says, " Pine barrens of the middle districts, mosdy 

 in dry soil, Alabama to North Carolina." It may perhaps be 

 found more extended than this when the local botany of the 

 Southern States shall be more full}' known. The editor of the 

 "Botanical Gazette" nodces in the first volume of that serial 

 that he found it on the "knobs of Southern Indiana ;" and Dr. 

 Gray admits it into his " Manual of Botany of the Northern 

 United States" as being found in Virginia and Kentucky. 



Though confined to such a comparatively limited district, it 

 seems to have early attracted the attendon of botanists in our 

 country. Gronovius in his "Flora Virginica," ed. of 1762, 

 notices it as having been known to David Bannister, who 

 collected much earlier in the century. It was also in the collec- 

 tion which Clayton sent to him. It seems to have been known 

 in P^ngland as a cultivated plant so early as 1748. 



The peculiar running roots, not common at least in Iris, were 

 noticed by these early botanists. In those days the binomial 

 system, or that which restricted the names to two, that of genera 

 and species, had not been adopted, and Gronovius refers to this 

 as the Iris which has "a fibrous root, one flowered stalk, shorter 

 than the leaves, and with a beardless corolla." To Linnaeus we 

 are indebted for the short specific name vcrna in place of the 

 long strin-g of descriptives as given above. 



The Irises of the old world have been very much improved 

 by natural selection and inter-crossing, and of some of the kinds 



