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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



tinct, that is, specifically distinct, Irises belonging to this group : 

 one, which when it bears deep-coloured flowers always seems 

 to me very handsome, was called by Lamarck I. nudicaulis, 

 because the scape is not, as in so many other Irises, clothed and 

 indeed hidden with clasping leaYes, but seems to rise as a 

 " naked " stem straight up from the rhizome. This plant, which 

 varies in its tint of purple, has also been called I. bohcmica. It 

 grows in South-eastern Europe, and I cannot as yet distinguish 

 from it any separate I. hungarica. One special feature of the 

 plant is that it loses its leaves early and entirely, so that for the 

 greater part of the winter the rhizome is hidden under ground, 

 or shows only quite dormant buds. In Italy there is found an 

 allied form, differing from the above in having the scape more or 

 less clothed with leaves at the base, as well as in other features ; 

 and it is this which I usually find labelled " nudicaulis "' in 

 collections. In Portugal occurs still another form, with larger 

 and fewer flowers than the above, sometimes bearing only one or 

 two, the I. sub-biflora of Britero. The character of flowering a 

 second time in autumn is one on which no great stress ought to 

 be laid ; whether it occurs or not depends a good deal on the 

 season, and is much more special to particular plants than a 

 constant feature of any one form. Some of the dwarf forms of 

 I. pallida, more or less allied to Ccngialti, frequently flower 

 again in the autumn, as, indeed, do other kinds of Iris also. 



This group of I. biflora passes almost insensibly through the 

 yellow I. lutescens, the whitish I. vircsccns, to I. italica and 

 I. olbiensis, and so to I. pseudo-pumila, I. chamaeiris, and 

 I. pumila. Of these, the rarest in our gardens, and apparently 

 not very common in a wild state in Europe, is what I may call 

 the true I. pumila, characterised by a single flower, with a very 

 long tube, three, four, or five times as long as the ovary, borne 

 on a scape which is so short that it is never visible above the 

 leaves. In J. Chamaeiris, which is an inhabitant of the South of 

 France, the tube is much shorter, the scape is often visible, and 

 the plant goes to seed much more freely than does the true pumila. 

 Most of the plants which I find in collections labelled " pumila " 

 are either forms of Chamaeiris or hybrids, or belong to some divi- 

 sion other than pumila of this dwarf group. I must not stop now 

 to discuss the characters of the several members of this group, 

 but I may say this much — As you pass from the South of 



