The Garden Magazine, June, 1924 
291 
Beets, small grains, to mention a few. Strawberries are 
especially susceptible, and whole beds of these are sometimes 
destroyed if the plants are set in newly broken or poorly cul¬ 
tivated soil. Young Corn meets the same fate if the grubs are 
thick. On lawns, as in meadow lands, the grubs are at times 
numerous enough to kill the grass over large spaces so that the 
loose sod can be rolled back like a carpet. It is in places like 
this that skunks wax fat and sleek, for they tear back the dead 
sod and eat grubs with evident delight. 
The white grubs are native insects and are not without 
natural enemies—besides the above-mentioned skunks, moles 
and ground squirrels eat them as do the toads and frogs and 
probably insectivorous snakes. Great numbers of birds feed 
upon either the grubs or the beetles; among them the robin, 
catbird, meadow-lark, woodpecker, black bird, crow, owl, and 
hawk. A few insect parasites have been bred from the grubs, 
the most common one being a queer shaped insect with slender, 
crooked abdomen. 
Fall plowing, thorough cultivation of crops, and rotation are 
practical remedial measures. In general any management 
which strengthens the plant will lessen losses from insect injury. 
A rich soil, well cultivated , may grow crops in spite of an infestation 
which would he fatal on poorly managed land. Where chickens 
can run through freshly cultivated soil infested by grubs, they 
prove efficient aids; and it sometimes happens that the adult 
beetles are locally so numerous that it is possible to kill them 
by spraying the trees where they congregate at night with 
arsenicals. Edith M. Patch , Maine State Entomologist. 
SPECULATING IN IRISES 
SHERMAN R. DUFFY 
Whither Are We Heading in the Fascinating Game of 
Breeding Irises from Seed? Of Dukes and Ugly Ducklings 
Among the Newcomers and the Search for Nobler Parentage 
K ROWERS of Iris seedlings are much in the position of 
not knowing just where they are going but of being 
happily on the way with many great adventures along 
the route toward a goal at which they may never 
arrive. Mr. A. J. Bliss (at present the foremost originator of 
Irises whose introductions are predominant in most of our Iris 
lists) seeking to breed a crimson Iris or a yellow-grounded Mme. 
Chereau type found instead Dominion, in many ways the 
world’s greatest Iris, an entirely new type and parent of a new 
race which is just beginning to reach our gardens. 
Fairy, the beautiful white Iris with its delicately blue tinted 
throat and the scent of orange blossoms, was a foundling. 
All of the great Irises originated by Bliss came through his 
experiments in crossing and growing seedlings with the idea of 
the red Iris and the yellow plicata in mind. The parents of the 
great Dominion were not at all unusual Irises: Cordelia, a bicolor 
of red-toned purples, and Amas or Macrantha, which is common 
enough in our gardens; and neither one of them high priced I rises. 
The gorgeous Souvenir de Mme. Gaudichau was of even more 
commonplace ancestry: the old President Morel and Dalmatica. 
Breeding Irises for our gardens is one of the simplest and most 
fascinating of pastimes. They are as easily grown from seed as 
any of the standard perennials such as the Delphiniums, Pyre- 
thrums, Gaillardias, and plants of similar character. Their 
culture is simple and there is not the long wait for them to 
bloom that their appearance and massive structure suggests. 
Some seedlings bloom the second year, as do the great majority 
of perennials. All should bloom the third season with ordinary 
care and they usually have made large enough clumps by then 
so that if a particularly fine variety appears it can be propagated 
at once into several blooming clumps for the succeeding year. 
And strangest of all and the most fascinating part of growing 
seedling Irises is the fact that out of hundreds of seedlings no 
two will be precisely alike; they show a remarkable variation in 
coloring and marking. 
How to be Sure of Seed 
T HERE are three ways of securing seed. The first and most 
common is to save the seed that forms as the result of 
fertilization by bees. The second is to choose the seed parents 
and plant them in proximity with good varieties in order to 
govern in this manner the parentage as far as possible. The 
third way is hand pollination, selecting seed and pollen parents 
and transferring the pollen from the male parent to the stigma 
of the mother plant. 
My garden is principally an Iris garden and made up for the 
most part of my own seedlings chosen for their color, freedom of 
bloom, or some other characteristic that struck my fancy. 
While the greater number are of my own raising, I also have a 
fairly representative collection of the newer and better Irises 
recently introduced together with the tested older varieties. 
The most frequent question I am asked by visitors in Iris 
time is, “How do you cross them?” 1 have demonstrated 
and have started several gardeners on the way to raising 
their own Irises. The Iris is so constructed that it cannot fer¬ 
tilize itself. Unlike a great many plants where the stamens and 
pistil are clearly apparent and so closely placed that self pollina¬ 
tion cannot well be avoided as, for instance, the Tiger Lily, they 
are well disguised in the Irises. The three strap-shaped prongs 
which spread from the center of the flower and terminate in two 
points are the divisions of the pistil or style branches. Under¬ 
neath each one of these and just above the beard of the fall 
nestles the stamen. 
The stigma where the pollen must be applied is not visible 
as you look into the flower. It is a little lip or shelf underneath 
and just back of the two divisions of the style branches. It has 
a velvety surface and may be readily discovered on close inspec¬ 
tion. When the flower opens and the stigma is ripe for fertiliza¬ 
tion, this lip or little shelf droops. Previous to that it is close 
up to the under surface of the style branch. As the bee enters 
the flower, pushing his way between the style branch and the 
fall to get at the nectar in the tube, he bends back.the little lip 
and the velvety surface sweeps his back and any pollen he 
has accumulated in another Iris is wiped off on the velvet of the 
stigma. As the bee backs out of the flower with a fresh load of 
pollen on his back the lip is pressed back against the style 
branch and the velvet surface protected against any contact 
with its own pollen. 
Artificial fertilization consists in picking the anther from one 
flower and placing the pollen upon the little lip under the style 
branches of another flower. The stamen may be removed with a 
small pair of tweezers or picked with the fingers and rubbed on 
