196 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 



hosniaca, as well as two others, whose very names have 

 long since perished from my memory. These are for the 

 dry rock-garden; so are intermedia and pretty violet- 

 flagged Fieberi, of small stature and splendid bloom ; 

 and all the Rohais hybrids, too ; — in which, for the rest, 

 I am disappointed, their growth being very lavish and 

 leafy, their flowers rather dull and undistinguished by 

 comparison. 



But before I go on to the Bog-Irises themselves, it wiU 

 be but common decency for me to find places on my 

 bank for the large Flag-Irises. Germanica itself — the 

 old common type-plant, with its tall stems and its great 

 glorious purple flowers — is worthy of our-humblest grati- 

 tude ; it is no less amiable in good soil, high on the slope 

 above the bog, than amid the sooty, cat-hunted wastes of 

 a London Square. It has produced innumerable varieties 

 and hybrids, of course, intermarrying freely with its close 

 cousins in the bearded group ; but none of the children, 

 to my taste, surpass the robust imperial splendour of the 

 type. Indeed many of them grow poor and indetermin- 

 ate in colour, developing a small, wizened fall, far inferior 

 to the flopping purples of germanica, so amply grace- 

 ful in design as well as magnificent in colour. For the 

 bronzy, yellowish, fulvous, mottled hybrids of germanica 

 I have no use. Innocenza, white as its name denotes, is 

 beautiful, and others, of old raising, have full form and 

 fine colour. Madame Chereau, the edges of whose snowy, 

 frilled falls are pencilled most exquisitely with pale azure, 

 is another beauty, long established, but not to be ousted 

 by new-comers. Yet Madame CMreau is not a germanica 

 pur sang ; and, besides, for all her dainty loveliness, has 

 not the full, unhusbanded length and stretch of petal 

 that marks the best of the German Irises. 



Germanica, however, is flanked by two formidable 

 rivals in Jlorentina and pallida. So well known and well 



