162 MY GARDEN 



Kharput, strong violet-purple, large flowers, thirty- 

 three inches. 



Ingeborg, standards white, falls tender gray, orange 

 beard, seventeen inches. 



Other tall-growing, May-flowering Irises are I. floren- 

 tina, albicans, Billioti, Cengialti, benacensis, and flave- 

 scens. Florentina, from the root of which is made the 

 fragrant orris powder, is only less familiar as a charming 

 inhabitant of old gardens than the Purple Flag. It is 

 one of the loveliest of Irises, and its French-gray crepe 

 flowers are invaluable to us in creating May pictures. 

 It is fine with the Dicentras and tall pink Tulips of the 

 Cottage and Darwin types; with the yellow Doronicums 

 and the pretty lavender-flowered Phlox divaricata, and is 

 splendid in spreading groups near pink-flowered Crab- 

 apple trees. Albicans and its variety Princess of Wales 

 are forms of florentina blooming a little later and with 

 flowers very nearly a pure white. 



Iris Billioti is a tall plant bearing very fragrant red- 

 purple blossoms late in May, and I. benacensis, in two 

 shades of purple, grows only eighteen inches tall and 

 blooms in the early part of the month. 



I. Cengialti, which Miss Jekyll mentions as the nearest 

 to a blue Iris, is a slender plant not so firmly erect as 

 many of its kind, but very pretty. Its two varieties 

 Loppio and Zephyr, the latter more lilac in colour, are 

 well worth possessing. Flavescens, bearing large, soft 

 yellow flowers, very sweetly scented, is one of the best of 



