SHOWY IRISES 65 



Japanese hybrids, which seem to need moist, rich, or at any 

 rate heavy, soil, and a warm, sheltered position, to do well. 

 As mere colour, the Japanese hybrids are marvellous, but it 

 is always hard to see how the Japanese, with their feeling for 

 graceful lines, can ever have countenanced the doubling 

 and distortion which seems to have been one of the chief 

 aims of the hybridisers. The wild plant is much more 

 shapely, and has flowers of a rich velvety red-purple. More- 

 over (and this is curious in view of the diversity of the 

 Japanese results), its seedlings show here in England, at 

 any rate no variation. 



Another name that has been much confused with /. 

 K&mpferi, namely, /. Icevigata, does stand for a definite 

 wild plant, which is the most magnificent of all really 

 blue Irises. It is found wild in proximity to /. Kcempferi, 

 but it is still very rare in cultivation. Garden forms of it 

 are perhaps slightly better known, for they have been in 

 cultivation in England for some years under the name of 

 albopurpurea, which was given to a form which has white 

 flowers of the same shape as the type, spotted with blue 

 or purple. This appeared by chance at Kew among a 

 Japanese importation, and some specimens of it may still 

 be seen there in the new water garden. 



A trio of showy Irises from the Southern United States 

 deserves to be better known. It consists of /. hexagona, I. 

 Lamancei, and /. fulva. The first, it is true, will only 

 flower out-of-doors in a well-sheltered and warm corner, 

 by preference close against the wall of some heated glass- 

 house ; but it is a majestic plant, with large purple- blue 

 flowers on a tall, branching stem. /. Lamancei is becoming 

 much more common in cultivation, and is more easily 



E 



