The Pogoniris Section 
149 
a light ground. The colour is either blue or red purple, yellow or white, with a contrasting beard, either 
yellow, or white tipped with yellow or even bluish. 
Standards, rounded oblong with a canaliculate haft, slightly shorter than the falls, but usually a little 
wider. 
Styles, paler than the segments except along the deeper-coloured keel. 
Crests, small, trigonal. 
Stigma, entire. 
filaments, white or tinged with purple. 
Anthers, cream or tinged with purple. 
Pollen, cream. 
Capsule, i£ — 2^ in. long, oblong or oval in outline, the valves remaining attached together at the 
extreme tip after they have split open lower down. The section is rounded trigonal with a raised line 
running down each face. 
Seeds, red brown, pyriform, with wrinkled skins. 
Observations. 
This is the common dwarf Iris of the South of France and North Italy and is also the ancestor 
of most of the garden forms that are so commonly known as /. pumila. It is distinguished from the 
true pumila by the obvious stem, by the shorter tube and by the more inflated 
and less membranous spathes 1 . In cultivation it has the advantage that the 
new leaves attain some length before winter, but owing to this early habit of 
growth, imported plants are often less able to resist our winter than /. pumila. 
Like the latter, /. chamaeiris is very variable in colour and in dimensions and has 
received many names. Thus Lamarck’s I. lutescens is clearly a yellow flowered 
example such as are common in the south of France. H^non's I. olbiensis, 
with its various colour forms, differs in no essential from the more westerly 
specimens and I. virescens D.C. from Sion in the Rhone Valley is probably 
only an introduction from the south, for it grows on a hill, crowned with ruins, 
on which there also grows an Opuntia, that is likewise probably an escape 
from a formerly cultivated area. In cultivation the Sion plant is indistinguish- 
able from examples of H^non's I. olbiensis from the neighbourhood of Hy6res. 
In this connection it must be remembered that there was in ancient times a 
town of Olbia, near the actual site of Hy£res, and that this must not be con- 
fused with another Olbia on the coast of the Black Sea, a little to the East 
of Odessa. The confusion of these two names was probably the origin of the 
term "Crimean,” applied by trade catalogues to dwarf-bearded Irises. Any 
specimens from the Crimea are always found to be /. pumila and not /. 
chamaeiris. 
It does not seem possible to separate a variety italica, based on Parlatore’s /. italica (v. supra). 
Baker's statement (Hdk. p. 27) that it differs by having dark violet flowers does not agree with 
Parlatore’s original description of a variety C, " flore flavo.” The height of Italian specimens is as 
variable as those from France already mentioned on p. 14 1. Cf. Groves’ (E) specimens: that of 1861 
has a 3 in. stem while that of 1878 is no less than 10 in. high. 
The cultivation is the same as that of I. pumila except that a position which gives some protection 
from frost and cold winds is desirable, especially for imported plants. 
Fic. 17. I. chamaeiris, show- 
ing stem, spathes, ovary and 
perianth tube. 
t M . MELLITA 
Janka; Magyar tud. akad. math. XII. p. 173 (1874). 
Termes. Fuzetek. vol. I. pt. IV. 1877. 
Synonym. 
I. Straussii, Michdli in Revue Hort. 1899, p. 363. 
Dykes in Gard. Chron. 1909, I. p. 391. 
fvar. rubromarginata. 
Synonym. 
I. rubromarginata. Baker in Gard. Chron. 1875, I. p. 5 2 4- 
Hdk. Irid. p. 30 (1892). 
Distribution. Thrace (S.-E. Turkey) and North-Eastern Asia Minor. 
Thrace. Philippopolis ; Tschiendem Tepe, 1891, Sintenis (K) (BM) (B). 
1891, Pichler (BM) (V) (B). 
1892, Stribrny (B). 
1893, Stribrny (V) (E) (B). 
1896, Stribrny (K). 
1902, 1906, Stribrny (E). 
1 See also the introductory remarks on the group on p. 14 1. 
