The Pogoniris Section 173 
This description of I. sambucina agrees fairly well with the plate in Reichenbach’s leones cccxxxv. 
fig. 762, which is also mentioned by Hausmann Flora von Tirol (l.c.) as representing a plant that 
grows near Bozen. This plant I have obtained and cultivated and if the identification is correct, then 
the description may be further amplified as follows. 
Leaves , with purple colouration at the base. 
Stem, much branched, and many flowered, for even the lateral branches bear 3 flowers. 
Spathes, in. long, largely but not wholly scarious. 
Pedicel , none in the case of the two outer flowers in each spathe but £ in. long in the case of the 
centre flower, which is the last to bloom. 
Ovary, £ in. with six grooves at equal intervals. 
Tube, | in. 
Falls, obovate-cuneate ; the blade much veined with deep bluish-purple on a grey-white ground ; 
the veins coalesce towards the tip of the blade. On the haft the veins are rather brown-purple on a 
yellow-white ground. The beard is orange. 
Standards, obovate with short canaliculate haft ; the blade of a dingy yellowish-purple and the haft 
veined with brown-purple on yellow. 
Styles, dingy yellow with a sharp blue-purple keel. 
Crests, large, broadly triangular, of the same mixed colour as the standards. 
Stigma, entire. 
Filaments, white, tinged with faint lavender. 
Anthers, small cream. 
Pollen , cream. 
Capsule and pollen not seen, because the plant appears to be usually sterile. 
Observations. 
The plant just described is not that usually grown as I. sambucina and it sometimes appears under 
the name of I. lurida, e.g. in the Caen Botanic Garden, but it is probably the plant that was the 
subject of Linnaeus’ description. 
I. squalens is said in the original description to differ by having standards and styles of a squalid 
yellow colour. The falls are veined with yellow-white on a bluish ground. Such a form exists in 
gardens and so does also another in which the bluish ground is replaced by red-purple. The plant 
already described as I. sambucina is so similar to both of these except in colour, which in Irises is a 
character the reverse of reliable, that it is impossible to look upon them except as hybrid forms and 
we must acknowledge that further investigation and breeding experiments are necessary before the 
mystery of their origin can be cleared up. 
[N.B. It is not quite clear whether the Bozen plants must be looked upon as really wild or as 
probable escapes from cultivation. With the specimens that I received came two other plants of much 
dwarfer growth. In one the standards are clear yellow and in the other of a murky yellow. In both 
the falls are veined with claret-red on a yellowish-white ground. These plants are quite different from 
what I take to be I. squalens , being much dwarfer and having a much less ample inflorescence. I 
understand that these plants now grow near Bozen with that described as I. sambucina.] 
On the whole I am inclined to think that the two plants that Linnaeus described as /. sambucina 
and I squalens were both hybrids of /. pallida and I. vanegata. They are intermediate in many ways 
between these two species, e.g. in the spathes and in the colour, and the leaves die down in winter 
as do those of both the supposed parents. The fact that forms closely resembling I. sambucina and 
I. squalens have been obtained from crosses between I. plicata and I. variegata seems to support this 
view, for I. plicata is only apparently an example of /. pallida in which some factor is present that 
prevents the purple colour from appearing except at the edges of the segments. See also p. 234. 
t /. CORYGEI 
Lynch, Book of the Iris, p. 146 (1904). 
I am indebted for plants of this Iris to Mr Lynch, of the Cambridge Botanic Garden. It is 
in my experience, neither robust nor free-flowering. However, the warm weather in the summer of 
ion and in the spring of 1912 caused the plants to throw up several flower stems, whtch showed 
that this Iris is almost certainly of hybrid origin and that one of its ancestors was /. vanegata. 
The leaves are falcate, strongly ribbed and not very glaucous. The spathe valves are short, some- 
what inflated, green at the base and scarious in the upper third. The short ovary is six-grooved and 
the tube about 2 in. long. , f _ 
The falls extend almost horizontally, -a characteristic feature of /. vanegata- and are of a pale blue- 
lilac colour on the blade and veined with yellow-brown on the greenish-white haft. The beard i 
yellow. The almost orbicular standards are of a still paler shade of light lilac than the falls and they 
show distinct traces of a suffusion of yellow. 
