322 
The Garden Magazine, July, 1920 
England histrioides, Rosenbachiana, and Bakeriana begin to 
flower in January; then come the other reticulatas and the 
dwarf Junos allied to persica — stenophylla with flowers of 
two shades of blue-purple, and Tauri with red-purple flowers 
veined with gold. In March and April come bucharica and its 
allies: orchioides (yellow), Warleyensis (purple), sindjarensis 
(pale blue), and caucasica (pale yellow). In America the 
season would probably be shorter and all the species would 
begin to flower as soon as the snow melted. 
These bulbous Irises are closely followed and indeed overtaken 
by the Dwarf Bearded Irises (Pogoniris) such as pumila, chamae- 
iris Reichenbachii, mellita, etc. All these species have many 
color forms, varying from yellow to purple, and all come from 
regions with cold winters, except chamaeiris which is from the 
south of France. There are 
two points to remember about 
their cultivation. One is that 
they must be grown in sunny 
positions, and the other is that, 
since they are shallow rooting 
plants, they should be lifted 
and replanted every two or 
three years as soon as the flow- 
ers have faded. 
O F HYBRID Pogoniris 
there are innumerable 
forms which it is not proposed 
to enumerate here, for we are 
concerned for the moment rather 
with the wild species from which 
our garden Irises have been 
evolved by selection and hy- 
bridization. The above men- 
tioned I. chamaeiris has been 
used in conjunction with later 
and larger species to give us 
what are known as the Inter- 
mediate Irises — such as Ivorine, 
Dorothee and Queen Flavia — 
but there are wild species such 
as aphylla (purple white or pale 
yellow) from Central Europe, 
sulphurea (pale yellow) from 
the Caucasus, and Alberti (light 
blue-purple or yellow) from 
Turkestan which flower with 
theseintermediates and of which 
the possibilities have been as 
yet only very slightly explored 
by hybridization. 
There are at least half a 
dozen forms of 1. germanica 
with apparently equal claims 
to be called the type — hence I. germanica is a puzzle! No 
one is undoubtedly wild anywhere, though the various forms 
have escaped from cultivation and established themselves 
widely — but always near habitations — from Spain to Nepal. 
Of each form there is also an albino, e. g., the well- 
known florentina; and the truth would seem to be that all 
are of hybrid origin. Most are delicate in that their flower 
buds are liable to be killed by frost long before they have grown 
sufficiently to emerge from the leaves, therefore American 
gardeners in the North would probably be better advised to grow 
rather those hybrids which have sprung from the combination 
of the purple of I. pallida and the yellow and brown of I. 
variegata. 
The first known hybrids of these were called sambucina and 
squalens; and it was once my good fortune to go to a remote 
alpine valley 4000 feet above the Croatian coast of the Adriatic 
where, amid the melting snows in April, I dug up plants among 
which I found, when they flowered, both pallida and variegata 
and the hybrid forms. 
For later flowering forms one of the best parents is I. trojana, 
which is reported to have come from the neighborhood of Troy 
and which is distinguished by its branching habit. Hybrids of 
it have given me stems bearing as many as fifteen flowers in- 
stead of the normal four or five of typical germanica. It is to 
I. trojana that we can trace such comparative new comers as 
Isoline and Alcazar. Pallida, variegata, and trojana are all 
well adapted to withstand a continental winter, and therefore 
are far better suited to American gardens than such magnifi- 
cent plants as mesopotamica or Ricardi, which grow rapidly in 
any moist period in the autumn and then suffer in their foliage 
during the winter. 
ES 1 DES the Pogoniris 
proper there are two other 
sections of which the flowers are 
bearded, though they are dis- 
tinguished sharply by other 
characteristics. One is that of 
the Oncocyclus species, the most 
wonderful and the most difficult 
to grow of all 1 rises. 1 imagine 
these might prosper in the dry 
warm climate of parts of Cali- 
fornia and Arizona, but in the 
East the only hope apparently 
would be to keep them dry 
with the aid of a glass roof 
overhead, and thus to prevent 
their making any autumn 
growth above ground until the 
arrival of frost and snow insures 
their remaining dormant until 
spring. 
The homes of these species 
are in Asia Minor, Syria, and 
Persia, and it is to be hoped 
that under a new and non- 
Turkish regime in these coun- 
tries it will be possible to obtain 
specimens of them. They are 
characterized by their large 
flowers, delicately veined and 
dotted with the most amazing 
combinations of color in such 
beautiful species as Lortetii 
from Lebanon, or by the weird 
shape of the Persian paradoxa 
and the Caucasian acutiloba. 
The other section comes from 
further east and is found cen- 
tered in Turkestan. It is closely allied to the Oncocyclus sec- 
tion, but these Regelia Irises have two or three flowers instead 
of only one on each stem. The best known species are Korol- 
kowi with conspicuously verned flowers, and stolonifera in which 
various shades of brown and electric blue strive for the mastery. 
These two sections have been hybridized together to form the 
Regel io-cycl us Irises, which to some extent combine the beauty 
and coloring of the Oncocyclus species with the vigor and greater 
ease of cultivation of the Regelias. Here 1 find it advisable to 
lift the latter in July and to replant them in October. Without 
this check they are apt in autumn to produce their foliage which 
is then damaged, if not destroyed, in winter. Probably with 
this treatment they would succeed admirably in the climate of 
New York. 
Of the various groups of Apogon or Beardless Irises it will 
scarcely be possible to treat in detail here. To this sec- 
BROAD AND DISTINCT IS THE JAPANESE IRIS 
Of the Apogon section which comprises the beardless Irises, 
these are in 'the white to blue-purple shades and combine 
delightfully with flesh-pink Candytuft as here shown 
