IRIS MISSOURIENSIS. 
ROCKY MOUNTAIN IRIS. 
NATURAL ORDER, IRIDACE. 
Iris MIssourIEnsIs, Nuttall.—Floweis beardless; stalk terete, taller than the leaves, sub three- 
flowered; leaves narrow, sword shaped; capsule oblong-linear; flowers two-colored. 
Stem twelve to sixteen inches high, erect, filled with pith, producing about three flowers, 
of which the large reflected petals are yellow, and the inner petals blue and narrow. 
Germ oblong-linear. (Nuttall in an account of the plants collected by Captain Wyeth. 
Fournal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Vol. VIL, p. 38, 1841. 
See also Sereno Watson’s Botany of Clarence King’s Expedition as Lris Tolmieana, and 
Porter’s Hora of Colorado as Iris tenax ?) 
HOUGH we aim to make our work one for the whole 
people as well as for the botanist, and it might therefore 
seem that all that is known of a plant’s popular as well as of its 
scientific history should be included, it is not possible to do more 
than make selections, or give brief notes, except in cases where 
there may be many species of a genus, when from time to time 
we might hope to furnish enough to make every branch of a 
plant’s history tolerably complete. In regard to /77s we have 
already given short sketches of its popular history, and have 
related that the ancients gave its fabulous origin to Juno, in 
honor of Iris, one of her waiting-maids. We may here quote the 
account of this as set forth by a French writer of several hundred 
years ago, Louis L. D’Auxerre, and translated into English in 
1706: 
“We are at a loss to know wineis /ris first had a being; some 
say at Florence; others in Greece; some in England; and 
others again fix her Nativity elsewhere; but it is known that she 
was the Daughter of 7haumantias and Llectra ; and, inasmuch 
as these Deities travell’d much, the Place of her Nativity was 
