IRIS 207 



gardens of Horikiri — a little, shallow vale of an acre or 

 two, a river-spate, in its time, of blue and purple splen- 

 dour, where the Irises are so crowded that hardly a leaf 

 can be seen, rari nantes in gurgite vasto of that swirling 

 kaleidoscopic tide. And dotted here and there are little 

 summer-houses of wood and thatch, open on all sides, 

 where one drinks pale tea brought by Elder Sister, with 

 a painted fan and a few Iris blooms wrapped up in paper 

 — and then writes poetry to the ecstatising glory of the 

 flowers all around. 



There are many schools, schisms, heresies, heterodoxies 

 as to the treatment, in England, of the Japanese Iris, 

 and, by dint of all these, the plant has acquired a doubt- 

 ful reputation that I do not think it deserves. There is, 

 to start with, one great predominant don't in the culture 

 of Iris Kaempferi. Never plant it in shady places, in 

 hollows of the wood, and so forth. If you do this it will 

 possibly grow well and permanently, but it will never 

 flower, or very rarely. It is dependent for its bloom and 

 general welfare on complete exposure to the sun (at 

 least this is my firm and pious, though humble, convic- 

 tion). After this, all is uncertainty. I have even heard 

 of Iris Kaempferi rioting in beauty on a high, hot, and 

 sandy slope (history did not say how long it continued 

 to do so, urges my scepticism). I have heard of it, I say, 

 luxuriating or failing, in the most improbable places, and 

 altogether the question seems as hopeless of final canonical 

 settlement as that of the right culture for Lilium candi- 

 dum. Perhaps, like a theological dogma, or the cat's 

 inquiry about the historical precedence of owl and egg, 

 there is no real end or answer, no definite, unalterable 

 right or wrong. 



There is one consideration, before I try to deal with 

 the matter by the light of my own experience, that, I am 

 sure, has helped to shed doubt and uncertainty over the 



