320 JOURNAL OF THE ILOYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



and when the winter is over they straighten themselves at 

 once. For a very long time indeed Ksempferi Irises have 

 mocked me, and they have laughed all my efforts to scorn. 

 Their wants may be summed up very briefly in this way : 

 They need both sunshine and moisture, and so do a great 

 many other things besides Ksempferi Irises. The problem of 

 problems is how to accommodate them the best. If you can 

 supply them with one it does not follow that you can accommodate 

 them with the other, and that by itself will not do. I have had 

 buckets of water poured over their heads, and it all ran through 

 my porous soil and very soon disappeared. The border has been 

 very deeply mulched without any return for it, and Ksempferi 

 Irises in my hot and arid garden have been a snare and a delusion. 

 But at last they are happy. They declare themselves to be so in 

 that unmistakable way in which plants say ' 'All right." 



I have a bed of 30 feet by 7 feet, excavated to the depth of 

 3 feet, and the whole of the sides and bottom plastered over with 

 thick heavy clay about 6 inches deep. This has made all the 

 difference in the world. The bed is now quite sufficiently 

 retentive of moisture to be of great use, and Venus and Othello 

 and Ida and Rutherford Alcock, &c, are growing as they have 

 never done before. It is a very simple way of adding moisture 

 to sunshine, but it makes the greatest possible difference. How 

 beautiful these Ksempferi Irises are, and how seldom they are 

 seen ! The colours range from the purest white to a sort of 

 violet-purple. They are sometimes beautifully veined and mottled 

 and picked out with yellow, and when all the six petals are of 

 nearly equal size (three not being suppressed as is sometimes the 

 case), and the flowers are 6 inches, or even 7 inches, in diameter, 

 they are objects worthy of the highest admiration as they lie 

 flatly open to the summer sun and drink in its blessed influence 

 on their lives. 



Another plant which I would especially like to notice, as add- 

 ing great beauty to my garden during the summer months, is 

 that singular Californian Poppywort which is found on the borders 

 of streams near San Diego. In a rather recently published 

 and interesting American work by Ellwanger, to which Mr. 

 Wolley-Dod has given his imprimatur by writing the preface, the 

 following passage occurs : " There is no flower that combines so 

 many good qualities — such fragrance, beauty, and general effect — 



