IRIS MISSOURIENSIS. RUCKY MOUNTAIN IRIS. I03 



" Far in the West there lies a desert land, where the mountains 

 Lift, through perpetual snows, their lofty and luminous summits. 

 Down from their jagged, deep ravines, where the gorge, like a gateway, 

 Opens a passage rude to the wheels of the emigrant's wagon. 

 Westward the Oregon flows and the Walleway and Owyhee 

 Eastward, with devious course, among the Wind-river Mountains, 

 Through the Sweet- water Valley precipitate leaps the Nebraska; 

 And to the South, from Fontaine-qui-bouille and the Spanish Sierras, 

 Fretted with sands and rocks, and swept by the wind of the desert." 



As it is the only species of Iris found there, the common name 

 of "Rocky Mountain Iris" has suggested itself to us. It was 

 first discovered by Captain Wyeth on the return from his cele- 

 brated expedition to the Pacific coast which left St. Louis in 

 March, 1834. Mr. Nuttall says Captain Wyeth found it "near 

 the sources of the Missouri on July 9th," and the specimen which 

 he gathered, and from which Nuttall made his description, is 

 preserved in the Herbarium of the Academy of Natural Sciences 

 of Philadelphia. The plant, from which our drawing was made, 

 was raised from seed gathered by the writer of this, in 1871, 

 from nearly the same location on a level dry plain at an eleva- 

 tion of about 8,000 feet above the level of the sea. Professor 

 Porter notes that it has also been collected in Colorado by Dr. 

 Smith, Brandegee, and Hall and Harbour, and again the writer col- 

 lected it in the Veta Pass in Southern Colorado, in 1878, so that 

 it may be looked for by those collecting in various parts of this 

 interesting region. The knowledge of Nuttall's plant was lim- 

 ited, and hence the specimens, found by other collectors from 

 this point west to Oregon, were not properly identified with it. 

 and the species has been re-named by other authors. Herbert, 

 in the " Botany of Beechey's Voyage," describes it as /. Tobuic- 

 ana, and as such it is referred to in Watson's " Botany of King's 

 Expedition." Mr. Watson, after examining the specimens in the 

 Philadelphia Academy, decides this to be the same as Nuttall's 

 original species. This discovery gives our Rocky Mountain 

 plant a wider geographical range. As /. Tolmieana Mr. Watson 

 records it " on the Willamette, Oregon ; Northern California ; 

 Ruby Valley, Nevada. Rather frequent on the Pah-Ute to the 

 East Humboldt Mountains, Nevada. 6.000 feet altitude." 



