THE IRIS 165 



variety of Florentina, named albicans, in a similar 

 position round about Jaffa. There, wandering by 

 the seashore, I came upon a ruined Mussulman 

 cemetery, netted from end to end with acres 

 of irises. Crooked and shattered, the tombstones 

 stuck from their green expanse. The time was 

 January, and no flower showed ; but I ventured to 

 remove a few rhizomes, and with the spring of the 

 following year they flowered freely. This is a lovely 

 iris of purest white ; though it has the yellow beard 

 of its class. A pigment called verdelis, or iris-green, 

 was made from the flowers of Florentina, but I know 

 not if artists use it nowadays. 



Iris Swertii is perhaps the least often seen of this 

 group. In delicacy of colouring it resembles plicata, 

 but has a rosy tinge in the lavender tone peculiarly 

 its own. It stands two feet high and flowers freely. 

 The falls and standards are white, touched with 

 warm but delicate rosy-lavender along the petal edges. 

 The beard is yellow in the throat and white upon the 

 fall ; the style-arms take the colour intensified, and 

 are exceedingly beautiful of tint. The Pallidae are a 

 small and select party, but in the remaining varieties 

 of it, viz. plicata and pallida proper, much has been 

 done by hybridising. Pallida, the pale flag, was 

 known as the Dalmatian iris. The flower is large 

 and of a soft and beautiful lilac tending to blue. A 

 feature to reckon with is the shrivelled, dried-up 

 spathe-valves. These perish before flowering, and 

 when first I came as an innocent to gardening, I was 

 horrified to see a fine spike of pallida apparently dying 



