THE ALGERIAN IRIS AND ITS VARIETIES 
in water, looking very pretty in small vases, 
and lasting for several days in a fairly cool room. 
Though seemingly on stalks of about 6 inches, 
the " stem " is really the hollow tube of the 
flower, which runs down to an ovary rising so 
little above the ground that its seed vessels are 
often half-buried and quite overlooked. It fre- 
quently seeds in the milder parts of the country, 
and will flower from seed in two years. 
Though Tr/'s stylosa will flower well in most 
southern gardens of light soil, in the 
colder and northern parts of the coun- 
try it is only satisfactory under glass, 
and for its long season of beauty it 
is worth a place in any greenhouse, 
flowering freely with very little heat. 
The bright evergreen leaves are hand- 
some in the bold tufts which are best 
for pot-work, and the plants can grow 
in the open all through the summer. 
Though they may be freely watered 
and fed with liquid manure for a while 
in spring, these plants should be thor- 
oughly ripened and left to get some- 
what potbound before autumn. Rich 
soil or over-feeding will even throw 
them out of flower, and when lost the 
habit is with difiiculty renewed, by 
starving through prolonged drought, 
or planting in very poor soil. Well- 
flowered pot-plants, whether white or 
blue, are very pretty for room decora- 
tion, but from their greater delicacy 
the white kind is less useful for cut- 
ting than the coloured forms. For this 
reason it is often planted out under 
glass, in the border of a cool rose- or 
fruit-house, flowering from December 
into March or April. Out of doors, 
several of the newer varieties bloom 
later than the parent, bearing larger 
flowers upon longer stems, and with 
leaves shorter and so much narrower 
as to show the flowers to fuller advan- 
tage. In this lies their chief value, for 
some of the colour variations are more 
distinct in name than in character. All 
are best in warm and open soils, flower- 
ing better, and being less worried by 
slugs. 
Varieties. — There are several 
named varieties, some of which are 
wild forms and others seedlings raised 
in gardens. In the south of Europe it 
comes so freely from seed that varieties are 
numerous, two of the best being siiperba and 
magnijica^with. larger flowers of deeper purple. 
The white form alba, is grown in quantity at 
