141 
The Pogoniris Section 
By /• pumila Linnaeus almost undoubtedly meant the Iris which is still common on the hills in 
the neighbourhood of Vienna, for he not only distinctly says that it grows on the hills in Austria but 
refers through C. Bauhin’s Pinax, p. 33, to Clusius’ History of Pannonian Plants, where we find a chamaeiris 
latifolia minor purpurea with a beard that was blue in front and yellow behind, which grew above 
Medeling (Modling), Gumpostkirchen (Gumpoldskirchen) and Baden. Clusius also mentions a red and 
a blue flowered form. 
In the face of this evidence we must not be led astray by the fact that in Linnaeus' herbarium at 
the Linnaean Society the specimen named “ /. pumila " is not this Austrian plant, with practically no 
stem and a long perianth tube (cf. Fig. 16, p. 144) closely wrapped in a membranous spathe, but the plant 
from the South of France with an obvious, though short, stem, a comparatively short tube and a more 
inflated and less membranous navicular spathe (cf. Fig. 17, p. 149). This is the plant to which the name 
of /. chamaeiris was given by Bertolini, and it is forms of this Iris and not of the real /. pumila which 
are so common in our gardens and in the trade catalogues under the latter name. Indeed, it is often 
hard to find any true /. pumila in commerce except two light blue-flowered forms, to which the names 
coerulea and azurca are usually attached. 
/. chamaeiris undoubtedly varies considerably in size and vigour but one instance will be enough 
to show that no great attention must be paid to this variation. At Mont Majour near Arles I found 
growing among the trees and bushes at the base, a yellow-flowered I. chamaeiris with a ten-inch stem, 
while about a hundred feet higher up on the open rocky side, I found a miniature copy of this with 
a stem not more than four inches high, the other dimensions being in proportion. After a year's growth 
side by side in my garden the two plants were identical in every way and the stems 6 in. high. Yet 
the difference between H Anon’s I. olbiensis and typical /. chamaeiris is no greater than that of the size 
in this case, and specimens of /. olbiensis from the locus classicus on the Domaine du Ceinturon between 
Hy£res and the sea have shown in my garden the extent to which their development even from year 
to year depends on the weather and on the soil in which they are grown. 
Another distinguishing mark between /. pumila and /. chamaeiris is to be found in the foliage. 
Both species behave in winter as we should have expected two plants from Austria and the South of 
France respectively to behave. Thus the leaves of the Austrian /. pumila do not grow to any length 
until the winter is over while /. chamaeiris sends up new leaves early in the autumn, and they are 
therefore several inches in length in winter. These characters remain constant in cultivation and enable 
us to separate these two species even in winter. This difference in habit also makes /. pumila much 
hardier in English gardens than imported plants of /. chamaeiris. 
The range of /. chamaeiris extends into north-western Italy. In the south and in Sicily it is replaced 
by a species which seems to combine many of the characters of /. chamaeiris with those of /. pumila. 
Thus the stem is several inches in length, as in /. chamaeiris , but it is almost entirely hidden by the sheathing 
leaves. The foliage is of some length in winter but the flowers have the long perianth tube of I. pumila. 
In Portugal, in Spain, and probably also in North Africa, there is found a species which is closely 
allied to, if not indeed actually identical with, I. pseudopumila, namely the /. subbiflora of Brotero 
(see Plate XXXIII). The difficulty of cultivating, or at any rate of flowering, these two plants in 
England has hitherto made it impossible to obtain any light from breeding experiments on the question 
of their affinity. It has therefore seemed best to retain the names for the present, though a better knowledge 
of the plants may possibly show that we must look upon I. pseudopumila as little more than a synonym 
of I. subbiflora. There is perhaps a slight difference in the shape of the spathes, which makes it possible 
to separate them provisionally (see p. 145). 
On the eastern side of the Mediterranean there is a corresponding dwarf Iris, which has been many 
times rechristened with such names as suaveolens, balkana, bosniaca, serbica, macedonica, etc. This /. 
Reichenbachii Heuff. is distinguished from its western relatives by the clearer and more transparent texture 
of its flowers (cf. Plate XXXII (/. pumila) with Plate XXXIV (/. Reichenbachii)) and by the very sharply 
keeled spathe valves 1 . Just as I. chamaeiris is commonly either yellow or purple, so these two colours 
are represented in /. Reichenbachii, although the purple is of a curious brown shade of which a good 
example is found in the form that was first introduced into cultivation as /. balkana. All the forms of 
this Iris behave in winter as we should expect plants from the Balkans to do and lose their leaves entirely. 
There remains only the dwarf I. mellita Janka from Southern Macedonia, which extends apparently 
also into Western Asia Minor. It has the green, keeled spathes of /. Reichenbachii but they are long 
and narrow and not navicular and the tube is relatively much longer. It was to a specimen (K) of 
this species, collected at Scutari, that Baker gave the name of /. rubromarginata. 
The members of the group may be thus defined and separated : 
I. Spathes not sharply keeled. 
(1) Stem not produced or extremely short; tube at least three times as 
long as ovary and often much more ; spathes membranous and closely wrapping 
, , I- Pumila (p. 142). 
the tube. 
■ I, is a curious fac. .ha. /. SinUnisii. which represents /. in .he Balkans, is also distinguished from .ha. species b, 
its sharply keeled spathes. 
