224 
The Reticulata Section 
Description. 
Rootstock , a slender bulb, with netted coats, like that of I. reticulata, but producing a large 
number of offsets at the base. 
Leaves , quadrate, with four unequal sides and horny corners and tip, the first to appear being 
6 — 8 in. long at flowering time. 
Stem, very short. 
Spathe valves, pointed, colourless, transparent, with a few green veins. 
Pedicel, none, or very short. 
Ovary, cylindrical, ^ l° n g- 
Tube, 3—4 in. long, colourless at the base, then becoming much spotted with reddish purple. 
Falls, under surface, of a greyish or greenish white, with the blotches and veins showing through ; 
the edge of the blade is usually blue. 
Upper surface. The haft is separated from the ovate blade by a very slight constriction. The 
central yellowish ridge is not very prominent, and is marked with black tubercles at intervals. The 
haft is marked with branching blue veins, which towards the centre line become broken into dots. 
The edge and tip of the blade are deep blue, the central region being a creamy white marked with 
irregular scattered blue blotches, 2 — 2^ in. long by | in. wide. 
Standards, divergent, very nearly as long as the falls with a long canaliculate haft and a small 
oblanceolate blade. 
Styles, becoming distinctly wider in the upper part, so as to be almost triangular, about an inch 
long, blue, with a well-marked keel. 
Crests, large, f in. by f in., lanceolate rather than deltoid, blue, with radiating, deeper veins. 
Stigma, bilobed, with rounded outline. 
Filaments , expanding at the base, white, spotted with purple. 
Anthers, bluish, or white tinged with blue at the edges. 
Pollen, bluish white, of the characteristic reticulata type. 
Capsule, cylindrical, an inch or more in length, with thin, papery walls. 
Seeds, of the characteristic reticulata type. 
Observations. 
Some of the difficulties encountered in trying to enumerate and locate the various varieties of this 
Iris have already been indicated in the introductory notes to the Reticulata Section (see p. 220). Another 
difficulty is that the original description of the species will fit equally well either of two forms which, 
owing to the persistence of some of their characters, it seems best to separate. These characters are 
the direction of the standards and the appearance of the spathes. 
If we may take the figure of I. histrio in Gard. Chron. 1892, 11. p. 7 2 9 > anc ^ * n Foster, Bulbous 
Irises, p. 8 (1892) as correct, then in I. histrio the standards are not held erect but incline outwards, 
and the narrow, greenish, tapering spathes only reach to some distance below the top of the tube 
(see Plate XLVI, Fig. 4). The closely allied form, in which the standards are erect and tend 
almost to fold inwards one over the other (see Plate XLV, Fig. 2), has longer spathes, in which the 
white ground between the green veins is much more prominent. At the same time I hardly feel 
justified in the present state of our knowledge in giving this form a specific name, nor have I been 
able to ascertain the locality from which it comes. Meanwhile the varietal name orthopetala will serve 
to distinguish it 
If it were not that the difference in the direction of the standards is always apparently accompanied 
by the difference in the spathes that has already been mentioned, I should be inclined to attach little 
importance to it, for I find that plants, which none would hesitate to call Krelagei , have no less than 
three forms of standard, incurved, erect and obliquely divergent. 
The variety atropurpurea has apparently remained unknown except for the few bulbs that I received 
from Marash in 1908. The intense black sheen on the dark red ground is most striking, and the 
black processes that top the central ridge in typical /. histrio here become longer and more glistening, 
while the yellow central ridge is wholly absent. Even the anthers and the filaments are stained with 
the same black-red colour, but in shape and growth this curious plant differs in no way from /. histrio, 
of which it is a mere colour variety. Up to the present, I have been unable to obtain seeds to 
decide the interesting question as to whether or no it would breed true to the red-black colour. 
+ /. HIS TRIOIDES 
(Plate XLVI, Fig. i) 
Synonym. 
/. reticulata var. histrioides, Foster in *Bulbous Irises, pp. 9 and 59, figs. 7 and 37 (1892); ^Garden, XLII. 
p. 364 (1892). 
f Var. sophenensis 1 . 
1 This was called after the classical name of the district near Kharput, from which bulbs were first sent to Foster by 
Mrs Bamum of the American Mission at that place. 
