208 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 



plant's requirements. Iris Kaempferi, in normal circum- 

 stances, takes two full seasons, if not three, to become 

 established and show its true character, no matter how 

 favourable the site and soil in which it has been put. 

 And some gardeners, seeing their plants apparently lan- 

 guishing, although in excellent conditions, have probably 

 despaired too soon, and thrown the plant up as a bad 

 job ; whereas, had they been patient, the Iris would have 

 come to its own in its own good time. Again, in a bad 

 situation, the Iris is capable of making a wild morbid 

 display in its first season, and then dying outright — 

 following nature's law by which a moribund plant tends 

 to throw its expiring forces into a last desperate outbreak 

 of blossom, before inevitable death descends. This trick 

 is deadly and delusive, with its fallacious suggestion of 

 prosperity; and some growers, finding their Irises a 

 miracle of bloom the first year, and dead corpses the 

 next, may be too prone to condemn the thing, offhand, 

 as capricious, incalculable, and unsatisfactory. 



Now, as to the culture at Horikiri, where the summer, 

 I'll remind you, is wet and torrid, the winter dry and 

 icebound. Here the Iris is grown in fields of liquid 

 manure. All through the growing season water is ad- 

 mitted as into a rice-field. Then when the flower-buds 

 are forming the water is cut off, and no more is admitted 

 till the next spring, leaving the plants as dry as the 

 climate will allow all through summer, autumn, and 

 winter. The one thing certain is that Iris Kaempjeri 

 will never grow well and permanently in water, but must 

 be treated as an ordinary dry-ground plant, during about 

 three-quarters of its existence. From my own experience 

 I should be inclined to say that the most important 

 point to aim at is thoroughly efficient planting at the 

 outset. Make your soil as rich as you can possibly make 

 it, and as heavy too — though of course with efficient 



