4 PRESENT-DAY GARDENING 



in September and October, and even then be ready to 

 bloom again in the following spring. 



The existing literature on the Iris is mostly to be found 

 scattered in various botanical and horticultural publica- 

 tions, many of which are only accessible in the libraries 

 of the Herbarium Department at Kew and at the Natural 

 History Museum at South Kensington, or in a few other 

 large libraries. A most useful compendium of many of 

 these scattered references will be found in Mr. J. G. 

 Baker's Handbook of the Iridece, published in 1892. 

 Since that date no attempt has been made to bring together 

 in a systematic manner either the references to the newer 

 species or the results of further research concerning those 

 already known. And yet much remains to be done, both 

 in the direction of clearing up many difficulties of 

 nomenclature and synonymy, and also in reviewing the 

 species already described in the light of the recent advances 

 in the study of heredity that we owe to Mendel and 

 Bateson. 



In 1904 Mr. R. Irwin Lynch, of the Cambridge Botanic 

 Garden, published in The Book of the Iris a more 

 popular and less severely technical version of Mr. Baker's 

 treatment of the genus. Little attempt was made to check 

 the accuracy of the references and descriptions given in the 

 Handbook, but Mr. Lynch's work made a great appeal 

 to those gardeners who were interested in Irises and yet 

 were not sufficiently conversant with botanical terms to 

 be able to derive from the dry details of the earlier work 

 much idea of the appearance of the plants therein described. 

 To the professional botanist, the colour of the actual 



