ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 



tenaoo and Iris versicolor are also grassy-leaved Americans, 

 of which tenax, I fancy, is the more brilliant. But I 

 have not yet done any great things with either. Iris 

 virginica I mention only to contemn, and not because 

 it belongs among these grass-leaved kinds. In foliage 

 virginica is a straggling germanica ; in flower it is too 

 often a small, wizened tubergeniana, which, by con- 

 trast with the rank, tall, leafy growth, is almost in- 

 solently mean and poor. Iris hexagona, which I only 

 grow in its superior form Lamancei, is a puzzle to me. 

 This is a very beautiful species, I am told, of medium 

 size. But I rather fancy it hails from Southern China, 

 and its constitution is not altogether beyond suspicion. 

 In any case I have had Lamancei now for many years, dwell- 

 ing perpetually in the same favourable spot, and never 

 advancing or retreating in prosperousness. It remains 

 rigidly as it always was, and quite declines to flower. 



Of the Oncocyclus Irids I have already made my sad 

 plaint. Nor have I a more rosy tale to tell of the 

 Regelia section, which is supposed to be a shade easier 

 and stronger than the Cushion Irises. Among these 

 difficulties there are two, indeed, that I yearn to culti- 

 vate successfully — but never for me is such a golden 

 fate attainable. The two are susiana and Korolkowi. 

 Susiana is the gigantic, flag-flowered Mourning Iris, 

 which must have delighted Queen Elizabeth, so long has 

 it been in culture over here. This gorgeous Levantine 

 revels in hot, baked sand, and prospers, for instance, 

 most riotously, I believe, in the archiepiscopal garden at 

 Canterbury. But with me it will never do any good — 

 although it is a compatriot of Niobe, with whose lachry- 

 mose habits one would have thought my summers and 

 winters so harmonious and sympathetic. Never, never, 

 I fear me, shall I behold those vast, swelling flowers, 

 exactly like inferior, flimsy blotting-paper, all blotched 



