4 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
common, and include nearly all the plants offered in catalogues as 
pumila. I. mellita is known in its form rubromarginata, from Mount 
Rhodope ; while to I. Reichenbachii belong such forms as balkana 
and the dwarf yellow and purple Irises sent home from Salonika. 
Of the origin of I. germanica all that we know for certain is that 
it is not a native of Germany. Indeed, it is in all probability a hybrid, 
derived from I. aphylla, which in various forms is widely distributed 
over Central Europe. If /. germanica were a German species, it 
would lose its leaves in winter, as do all Central European Irises, 
and would be just as likely to seed freely in this country as I. aphylla, 
I. pumila, I. pallida, and I. variegala. However, I. germanica retains 
its leaves in winter, often remains flowerless owing to the destruction 
of the buds by frost, and hardly ever produces more than one or two 
sound seeds in a capsule. Indeed, it usually refuses to set any seed 
at all, and the few that are obtained give rise to plants of entirely 
different habit. Many of them closely resemble I. aphylla, of which 
it is characteristic that the stem branches below the middle and 
often even at the ground line. It seems, therefore, that one parent 
of /. germanica was probably some form of I. aphylla, but it is not 
easy to suggest the other. Another point of interest is that when 
the first flowers of I. aphylla expand, the spathes are always wholly 
herbaceous, either green or more or less flushed with purple, whereas 
in I. germanica the spathes are herbaceous in the lower half and 
scarious in the upper. 
The origin, therefore, of the various forms of I. germanica must 
for the present remain obscure, but there is less doubt about that 
of the later flowering varieties of garden Irises. The older among 
them seem all to have come from two species. — I. pallida and 
I. variegala. Of these the former has entirely scarious spathes, a 
comparatively tall stem with very short lateral branches, and either 
glaucous or green leaves ; while the latter has entirely herbaceous 
spathes, a much-branched stem, and strongly ribbed green leaves, 
which may or may not be flushed with purple at the base. 
These two species are natives of southern Central Europe, and 
may be found growing in close proximity in the neighbourhood of 
Bozen, and also in the Sinokos region of the Velebit Mountains on 
the Dalmatian coast. Here the plants grow at an altitude of some 
4,000 feet above the Adriatic, and are consequently dwarfed, but they 
comprise both pallidas and variegatas, and also miniature forms of 
what were once known as sambucina and squalens. The purple of 
I. pallida combines with the yellow of /. variegala to give murky, 
shot effects in the flowers of the hybrids, and there is no evidence 
that any other yellow-flowered species has any share in the composi- 
tion of garden Irises. I. flavescens is not a wild species, but a garden 
hybrid of variegala, though it was long confused with a very distinct 
plant from the Caucasus, I. imbricata, which is easily distinguished 
by its huge, inflated green spathes. 
I. pallida is an extremely variable species. In Southern Tyrol 
