IRIS VERNA.—SPRING IRIS. 47 
terminal growth of the underground runner for the season. 
This also has buds at the base, but shows no disposition to 
flower, and from this we may infer that the buds which do 
flower are considerably developed before winter sets in, and this 
too may be in favor of its early blossoming. Much may remain 
to be learned about its habits. The opportunity to study its 
behavior in a state of nature has not been favorable, as it 
inhabits woods in the South within a somewhat limited region, 
and away from thickly settled places. Professor Wood says 
only “ Hilly woods in the interior of the Southern States;” and 
Dr. Chapman says, “ Pine barrens of the middle districts, mostly 
in dry soil, Alabama to North Carolina.” It may perhaps be 
found more extended than this when the local botany of the 
Southern States shall be more fully known. The editor of the 
“Botanical Gazette” notices in the first volume of that serial 
that he found it on the “knobs of Southern Indiana ;” and Dr. 
Gray admits it into his “Manual of Botany of the Northern 
United States” as being found in Virginia and Kentucky. 
Though confined to such a comparatively limited district, it 
seems to have early attracted the attention of botanists in our 
country. Gronovius in his “Flora Virginica,” ed. of 1762, 
notices it as having been known to David Bannister, who 
collected much earlier in the century. It was also in the collec- 
tion which Clayton sent to him. It seems to have been known 
in England as a cultivated plant so early as 1748. 
The peculiar running roots, not common at least in /77s, were 
noticed by these early botanists. In those days the binomial 
system, or that which restricted the names to two, that of genera 
and species, had not been adopted, and Gronovius refers to this 
as the Iris which has “a fibrous root, one flowered stalk, shorter 
than the leaves, and with a beardless corolla.’ To Linnaeus we 
are indebted for the short specific name verva in place of the 
long string of descriptives as given above. 
The Irises of the old world have been very much improved 
by natural selection and inter-crossing, and of some of the kinds 
