468 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



sub-species, as I. Fiebcri, a splendid plant, and attains its greatest 

 development in /. nudicaulis, a plant with sickle-shaped leaves a foot 

 long and an inch or more broad, flower-stems a foot or more high, and the 

 whole plant covered with a glaucous waxy secretion like the bloom of 

 the grape. This latter plant has given some very distinct new hybrids 

 in which the main simple stem has run up to 16 or 18 inches, and bears 

 correspondingly large flowers, retaining, too, the distinguishing "bloom." 

 /. mcllita, a charming tiny species with rich bronzy-maroon flowers, 

 and /. rubro-marginata with scarlet spathe-valves, very tiny indeed ; 

 these are rare and valuable members of this group, which one would like 

 to enlarge upon did time and space permit. 



Of the Tall Bearded Iris. — These are the Irises which from a general 

 garden point of view stand first. They have had great attention paid to 



Fig. 147. — Alpine Irises. (Caparne.) 



them in the past, and, if flower-shows could come in Iris time, there is no 

 doubt of their speedy advancement into public favour now. They have a 

 most remarkable range of colour, every shade and tint of each and every 

 colour imaginable, with this one exception — the scarlet and scarlet-red or 

 orange. As was remarked of the Cape Irids, these scarlets, the missing 

 colours in Iris, are the centre colours of Irids ; and the difficulty of reach- 

 ing blue in the Irids is paralleled by the scarlet in the other case. Blue— a 

 water-colour expressible from many flowers, and capable of being used at 

 once as a stain or pigment, seems typical of a wet or moist climate, such 

 as I think our Iris is constructed for. It is, in fact, the centre colour. 

 Now flowers that start from blue, as a rule, have not the slightest objection 

 to reach pure yellow, or red-violet on the other side of the scale, and go 



