24 PRESENT-DAY GARDENING 



flowers that reward in England much pains in preparing 

 the soil and in choosing a site, and no small outlay. 



Those who think they can see design in everything 

 would perhaps be puzzled to account for the weird shape of 

 the fitly named paradoxa. It is indeed the " unexpected." 

 The standards are normal, but the falls are more like the 

 back of an elongated humble-bee than anything else. To 

 be prosaic, they are strap-shaped with a rounded tip, and 

 not more than half an inch wide. The whole length and 

 width is covered with thick, velvety hairs of black purple, 

 except that there is left uncovered near the tip of the falls a 

 mark of the shape that heralds might call a chevron. This 

 is of a dull pinkish colour. No one who has ever grown 

 and flowered this Iris wishes to be without it, and therefore 

 its price grows and grows, far more readily, indeed, than 

 the plant itself. 



One of the rarest and also one of the most beautiful 

 Irises of this section is the clear yellow urmiensis from 

 Northern Persia. It is fervently to be hoped that the Persians 

 will one day reduce themselves and their distracted Govern- 

 ment to order, for the present unrest in Persia a truly 

 journalistic euphemism makes it almost impossible to get 

 fresh supplies of this Iris, and we can only speculate as to 

 whether its brilliant colour would have any marked effect on 

 hybrids obtained from its pollen. 



It is always a matter for surprise that the gardeners of 

 the south of France seem to have chosen for cultivation 

 on a large scale the gloomiest of all the Oncocyclus Irises. 

 Susiana is sold in all the flower markets of the south, and 

 sometimes the great buds find their way on to the barrows 

 in the streets of London. The present writer has before 



