IRIS 203 



and lined and streaked and splashed and mottled with 

 inferior ink. 



As for Iris Korolkowi, this alone among its capricious 

 kindred has really stirred my love and enthusiasm. I 

 can make a manful stand against the charms of Iris 

 paradoxa, I can even bear up against the beauty of 

 Iris Lorteti with not more than a shooting pang of envy, 

 but I collapsed utterly on my first sight of Iris Korolkowi. 

 This, in its best forms (the inferior, ordinary ones are 

 dull and comparatively uninteresting), is a slender 

 grower, rising to a couple of feet at the most, and bear- 

 ing one or two elongated, gracious flowers, whose colour 

 is an indescribable mixture of fawn and brown, with the 

 clearest, gentlest, electric blue. I would go any lengths 

 to grow this, but I never have. Like all its kin, it 

 clamours for light, limy loam, fierce drainage, hot 

 summers, and dry winters — a hopeless demand to make 

 on me. But, given these requirements, none, I think, of 

 the Regelias and Oncocyclus groups can be fairly accused 

 of half-hardiness ; genuine half-hardies are Iris sinenis, 

 or Jimbriata, and Iris Milesii, of yihichjimbriata, common 

 enough in Japan, is an enlargement of my heart's best 

 love, gracilipes, and Milesii, a diminished, inferior form 

 of tectorum. As a matter of fact, as fimhriata is common 

 in Japan, it should be quite possible, if it were worth 

 while, to get plants from some cold district, and so make 

 sure of having it perfectly hardy in England. 



Dainty Iris nepalensis, of which Mr. Eden Phillpotts 

 writes with such enthusiasm, I have never yet possessed ; 

 nor, if I did, do I believe I should succeed in keeping it 

 for long. As for the new Regelio-Oncocyclus hybrids, I 

 have read flaming advertisements, I have ticked off their 

 names amorously in high-price catalogues, but I have not 

 hitherto bought any ; their names are classical and fitting, 

 which is a rare mercy in the garden (O namer of these 



