150 MY GARDEN 



The late Frank Miles, artist of fair faces and lover of 

 the garden, introduced it from the Himalayas. 



Another Evansia is gracilipes, which I have quite 

 failed to flower. This is a Japanese plant ; and yet 

 another from the same country is my favourite, 

 tectorum the roof iris called also tomiolopha, " the 

 jagged crest." It came to England in 1872, and 

 began to find its way into gardens a year or two after- 

 wards. The flower of tectorum is a beautiful true 

 violet slightly mottled with darker colour. Not a 

 suspicion of yellow marks it, but the falls have a 

 wonderful frill, like our great -grandfathers' shirt- 

 fronts, and this broken, laciniated fringe is spotted 

 with purple even as our great-grandfathers' also 

 were sometimes after the second bottle. The pollen 

 is white, the stigma branches stand up clear of the 

 flower in the midst, and the standards are spoon- 

 shaped, and grow at right angles to the stem. Very 

 unusual grace and beauty mark this iris, and for 

 those who love to link a flower to humanity there 

 is the story about it from Japan, and the reason why 

 the plant won its trivial name. Moderns say that 

 tectorum is grown to strengthen the thatch in which 

 it creeps and flourishes ; but if we retrace our steps 

 a more picturesque reason may be found. Once 

 there was a famine in the land, and all things that 

 could not be used for food were banished from the 

 soil. On pain of grave penalty might a man plant 

 that which would produce beauty only. But the iris 

 of the jagged crest was stronger than necessity, and 

 answered a higher law than hunger. It belonged to 



