46 IRIS VERNA.—SPRING IRIS, 
The word iris, as is well known, is Greek for rainbow, but the 
etymology of the word goes beyond this, acquainting us with the 
reason why the rainbow is so called; it seems to have been 
derived from zo, to foretell, the rainbow in old times having 
been supposed to be the heavenly messenger foretelling rain 
instead of, as now recognized, the actual consequence of the 
shower. 
The /ris verna is one of the earliest of spring flowers in the 
Southern States, being often in bloom in March among the 
forest leaves and before the green grass has hardly begun to 
grow. As Park Benjamin says of the Trailing Arbutus,— 
“Thou comest when spring her coronal weaves, 
And thou hidest thyself mid dead strewn leaves; 
Where the young grass lifts its tender blade, 
Thy home and thy resting place is made; 
And in the spot of thy lowly birth, 
” 
Unseen, thou bloomest, 
Mrs. Sara J. Hale, in her “Flora’s Interpreter,” explains to 
the reader that the Trailing Arbutus is “a sort of a strawberry 
vine, found in New England in March, the earliest of all spring 
flowers.” When such a monstrous suggestion can pass through 
the current of literature unchallenged, we shall surely be par- 
doned for using the poet's lines so appropriately here. 
Our plate shows the arrangement by which the plant is able 
to flower so early. Most Irises have to give as much growth to 
the flowering shoot as to the leaves on the barren shoots. 
Indeed in many cases the flower scape exceeds the leaves in 
length. In this species the increase of the plant is by under- 
ground runners which form leaf buds at various distances along 
their length. These buds make leaves at once, and form other 
buds at the base which do not develop till the following spring. 
These basal buds which are to flower push up immediately when 
the warm spring weather comes, and bloom as soon as they reach 
the surface, forming only a few diminutive leaves along the 
stems. Our Fig. 1 represents this. At Fig. 2 we have the 
