60 PRESENT-DAY GARDENING 



But to return to the more valuable members of the 

 spuria group. The Austrian form is capable of giving 

 good deep blue flowers, and so too is probably the 

 Caucasian /. spuria Notha. The Kashmir plants are prob- 

 ably the finest of all those forms with purple as opposed 

 to yellow flowers, though they are not yet commonly 

 found in cultivation. However, they do not differ widely 

 from the hybrids that Sir Michael Foster obtained by 

 crossing a large yellow-flowered /. Monnieri with pollen 

 from /. spuria. These hybrids are of various shades of 

 lavender, or blue-purple, and are showy garden plants. 



The best of the yellow-flowered races have been called 

 ochroleuca, Monnieri, and aurea. The first comes from 

 Asia Minor, and has large flowers of yellow edged with, 01 

 rather shading into, white, and grows from 3 to 6 feet high 

 according to soil and position. Monnieri has wholly 

 yellow flowers of a deep lemon shade, while aurea is a 

 Kashmir plant with flowers of a deep golden colour, dis- 

 tinguished by its crimpled segments. The origin of 

 Monnieri is veiled in mystery. It was first described as a 

 garden plant, and the supposed specimens of it in all the 

 chief herbaria of Europe which were obtained from Crete 

 are not this Iris at all, but 7. Pseudacorus, our common 

 yellow water-flag. It may well be that it arose as a seedling 

 form of some variety of spuria or 7. ochroleuca. A hybrid 

 ochraurea, whose name sufficiently indicates its parentage, 

 is perhaps more free flowering than any of the above. 



All the plants do well in heavy soil. If the soil is 

 naturally light and dry, it must be kept cool by plentiful 

 additions of old manure or decayed humus, and they all 

 respond to liberal supplies of moisture during the growing 



