40 
House & 
Garden 
FLOWERS OF THE RAINBOW 
A Survey of the Iris Available for American Gardens Discloses a Vast and 
Varied List That Gives a Long Season of Bloom and Color 
T HE iris is very beau¬ 
tiful. Even Joseph 
Pitton de Tournefort, 
who, more than 250 years 
ago, gave it its name, grew 
ecstatic when lie came to 
consider it, and called it the 
flower of the rainbow. And 
M. de Tournefort was no 
novice to be swept off his 
feet by the first pretty blos¬ 
som he encountered, for he 
was the official collector of 
plants to his most Christian 
majesty, King Louis XIV. 
and named and described in 
his day, quite unemotional¬ 
ly, 8000 species. 
And yet it is not its beau¬ 
ty alone which commends 
the iris. There is beyond 
this, something more; some¬ 
thing exotic, something sug¬ 
gesting other lands and 
other times, including more 
than a hint of round tow¬ 
ered castles perched on 
rocky heights, of mounted 
knights and streaming ori- 
flamme. It is by no mere 
chance, I am sure, that Mr. 
Bliss, the great English 
grower, has called one of 
his latest seedlings du 
Cues din. 
Yes, there is more than 
mere rainbow beauty in the 
iris, there is romance, and 
it has worked its spell upon 
mankind for centuries. In 
his notes on the history of 
the plant, John C. Wister 
says that the Moslem in¬ 
vaders carried the iris all 
over southern Europe, 
planting it upon the graves 
of their soldiers. Who else 
became interested in its cul¬ 
tivation is not known, but it 
was evidently taken into 
English gardens early, for 
Chaucer speaks of it, and 
Francis Bacon lists both the 
tall and dwarf bearded 
irises among the desirable 
cultivated plants. Since 
Elizabeth’s day many varie¬ 
ties have been both discov¬ 
ered and produced, until at 
present the genus is divided 
into ten sub-genera, while 
the species and garden va¬ 
rieties are innumerable. 
H. H. SCUDDER 
Windham, one of the new tall bearded iris hybrids, has standards of 
soft lavender pink and falls heavily veined with darker shades 
The ideal way to select iris is to see plants blooming at a nursery. On 
the right is a nursery block of Mithras, and to the left, Rhein Nixe 
The classification of the 
iris is based primarily on 
the character of the root, 
and the first seven sub¬ 
genera are distinguished by 
thick, fleshy, creeping root¬ 
stocks, known botanically 
as rhizomes. They are 
named, Apogon, Pardan- 
thopsis, Evansia, Psudevan- 
sia, Oncocyclus, Regelia, 
and Pogoniris. The re¬ 
maining three, Xiphion, 
J u n o a n d Gynandriris, 
growq not from rootstocks, 
but from bulbs. 
The irises of our gardens 
are by no means evenly dis¬ 
tributed among these ten 
sub-genera, but are confined 
largely to three of them, 
and almost exclusively to 
two of them. First in im¬ 
portance are the Pogoniris, 
the bearded irises, formerly 
and still to some extent list¬ 
ed in the catalogues as 
“German” irises. These 
irises all have a heavy line 
of “beard” down the center 
of each of the lower petals, 
or falls. Of these bearded 
irises there are dwarf kinds 
a few inches in height, 
known as Pumilla irises; 
intermediates, a foot in 
height; and the tall varie¬ 
ties which attain to 4' or 
even more. The dwarf 
irises are the earliest to blos¬ 
som, appearing in April or 
early May, the intermedi¬ 
ates follow, and the tall 
come last. The great pop¬ 
ularity of this group is 
illustrated at every iris 
show. That of the Amer¬ 
ican Iris Society at the New 
York Botanical Garden this 
spring devoted 21 of the 24 
classes to Pogoniris. 
Next in popularity are 
the beardless irises, or mem¬ 
bers of the Apogon sub¬ 
genus. They are found in 
American gardens in two 
groups, one the sibirica 
irises in blue and in white, 
and the other the Japanese 
irises. The sibiricas grow 
in clumps with narrow 
foliage and masses of me- 
(Continued on page 88) 
