IRIS MISSOURIENSIS.— ROCKY MOUNTAIN IRIS. 103 
“Far in the West there lies a desert land, where the mountains 
Lift, through perpetual snows, their lofty and luminous summits, 
Down from their jagged, deep ravines, where the gorge, like a gateway, 
Opens a passage rude to the wheels of the emigrant’s wagon, 
Westward the Oregon flows and the Walleway and Owyhee 
Eastward, with devious course, among the Wind-river Mountains, 
Through the Sweet-water Valley precipitate leaps the Nebraska; 
And to the South, from Fontaine-qui-bouille and the Spanish Sierras, 
Fretted with sands and rocks, and swept by the wind of the desert.” 
As it is the only species of /rzs found there, the common name 
of “Rocky Mountain Iris” has suggested itself to us. It was 
first discovered by Captain Wyeth on the return from his cele- 
brated expedition to the Pacific coast which left St. Louis in 
March, 1834. Mr. Nuttall says Captain Wyeth found it “near 
the sources of the Missouri on July gth,” and the specimen which 
he gathered, and from which Nuttall made his description, is 
preserved in the Herbarium of the Academy of Natural Sciences 
of Philadelphia. The plant, from which our drawing was made, 
was raised from seed gathered by the writer of this, in 1871, 
from nearly the same location on a level dry plain at an eleva- 
tion of about 8,000 feet above the level of the sea. Professor 
Porter notes that it has also been collected in Colorado by Dr. 
Smith, Brandegee, and Hall and Harbour, and again the writer col- 
lected it in the Veta Pass in Southern Colorado, in 1878, so that 
it may be looked for by those collecting in various parts of this 
interesting region. The knowledge of Nuttall’s plant was lim- 
ited, and hence the specimens, found by other collectors from 
this point west to Oregon, were not properly identified with it, 
and the species has been re-named by other authors. Herbert, 
in the “ Botany of Beechey’s Voyage,” describes it as /. Zolmze- 
ana, and as such it is referred to in Watson’s “ Botany of King’s 
Expedition.” Mr, Watson, after examining the specimens in the 
Philadelphia Academy, decides this to be the same as Nuttall’s 
original species. This discovery gives our Rocky Mountain 
plant a wider geographical range. As /. Tolmieana Mr. Watson 
records it “on the Willamette, Oregon; Northern California ; 
Ruby Valley, Nevada. Rather frequent on the. Pah-Ute to the 
East Humboldt Mountains, Nevada, 6,000 feet altitude.” 
