151 
The Pogoniris Section 
Hitherto, I have seen no evidence that yellow-flowered forms exist in Europe, but such specimens 
occur among Sintenis’ plants from the Troad (K) (BM) and others were sent to Kew from Smyrna 
by Whittall (K). 
In cultivation, /. mellita is distinctly a plant for the rock garden, where it does well in a sunny, 
well-drained position in a limestone soil. It should be transplanted every two or three years, for these 
small Irises seem to exhaust the soil within reach of their somewhat limited root-system, if left too 
long in the same place. The only alternative is to topdress the plants in spring and autumn with a 
mixture of limestone chips and old leafsoil, but this plant has the disadvantage that unless great care 
is used the rhizomes may become too deeply buried, in which case the plants will not thrive. 
Seeds are easily obtained by artificial pollination and the young plants grow rapidly and should 
flower in a year from the time the seedlings appear. 
The variety rubrornarginata , which was discovered by Barbey, the son-in-law of Boissier, near Scutari, 
was described as a species by Baker, possibly before he had seen the description of Janka's I. mellita, 
which only appeared in the previous year. In the original description the only difference is found in 
the length of the stems and this is admittedly variable in the case of I. mellita. When Janka republished 
his paper in 1876, he made rubrornarginata differ from /. mellita in its obtusely and not acutely keeled 
spathes, though the authority for this statement is not obvious, seeing that Baker had described his plant 
as having acutely keeled spathes. 
After cultivating side by side for some years some plants, which Mons. Correvon tells me came 
from Barbey's original collection and specimens of I. mellita from the Balkans, I am convinced that 
they must be looked upon as varieties of the same species. Specimens of rubrornarginata vary in the 
amount of red on the leaves. This feature is most prominent in early spring and on new growths at 
any time but sometimes it is quite inconspicuous and seems in any case to fade away as the leaves 
mature. Moreover a red flush is not unknown on I. mellita from the neighbourhood of Mt Rhodope 
and we may also compare such varieties of /. germanica as Kharput and Amas, whose leaves show 
the same feature at early stages of their growth. 
The variety rubrornarginata is always apparently very dwarf and the young red flushed leaves 
therefore appear from the first more falcate than those of /. mellita , although the central leaves of each 
tuft are quite erect. 
The flowers both of the type and of the variety agree closely in their colouring, shape and pro- 
portions. 
Since the red edge to the leaves disappears as they are dried, it is usually impossible to separate 
the variety from the type among herbarium specimens, which may be distinguished from I. pumila by 
the divergent, herbaceous, sharply keeled spathe valves. 
ft I. Reichenbachii 
(Plate XXXIV) 
Heuffel in Verh. ZBG. Vienna VIII. p. 206 (1858). 
in OBZ. VIII. p. 28 (1858). 
Synonyms. 
I. serbica, Pane. FI. Belgr. p. 243 (1883). 
I. Athoa, Foster in Gard. Chron. 1893, I. p. 71 1. 
7 . bosniaca , Beck, Ann. K. K. nat. Hofmus. Wien II. p. 51 (1887). 
•Wiener Illust. Gartenzeit. 1895, t 2. 
7 . macedonica *, Nadji (Chavrel), Emp. Ottom. PI. de Salon, p. 40 (1892) [specimen in Herb. (B)]. 
7 . balkana, Janka, Adat. Erd. in Mag. Tud. Akad. math. ds term. kozl. XII. p. 173, t. 14 (1874). 
7 . Rcichcnbachiana, Baker, Hdk. I rid. p. 32 (1892). 
7 . Skorpili, Velen. FI. Bulg. p. 535 (1891). 
7 . Straussii, Lynch, Book of Iris, p. 1287 (1906) ex parte. 
[Hitherto this Iris under one or other of its names has been made synonymous with either 7 . chatnaeiris, 
I. lute see ns or 7 . virescens, which are themselves all names of the French and Italian species, 
see p. 149, and cf. Asch. und Grab. Syn. III. pp. 472, 474, 475 -] 
Distributions. The Balkans and Southern Hungary. 
Banal, East, 18 — , Heuffel (V). 
Dubova, 1890, Janka (K). 
Bosnia and Herzegovina. Mt Trebovid (Sarajevo), 1885, Beck (V) [Locus classicus for Beck's 7 . bosniaca]. 
1893, Fiala (V) (BM), 1897, Fiala (B). 
Kajabasa (Travnik), 1889 and 1897, Brandis (K) (E) (B) (V). 
Rogatica, 1898, durcic (B). 
Orijin (Herzegovina), 1899, Curcid (B). 
Velez Planina (Mostar), 1896, Fiala (B). 
Montenegro. Hum Orahovski, 1886, Szyszylowicz (V). 
1 Among Foster's MS. notes I find the following entry confirming my identification of the Berlin specimen. 93 D (= the 
4th plant received in 1893) I. macedonica from hills Khortadj, 11 kilometres from Salonica, 1150 m. alt., from Nadji, Saloruca. 
“Rhizome small, compact, like purni/a , — is identical with 7 . Reichenbach. (Heuff.)." 
