THE FLOWERS FOR THE MILLIONS—OR THE MILLIONAIRE Page 29 
EARLY BLOOMING INTERMEDIATE IRIS 
If you have been growing only the tall-bearded varieties of iris, the time will 
come when you will wish that you could stretch the season out longer. There IS a 
way to extend the iris season and the way to do it. is—BACKWARBD.: 
To really begin at the beginning you should have some dwarf iris, which start to 
bloom a month or so before the tall-bearded. But our purpose, on this page, is to 
interest you in the early-blooming intermediates. It is necessary to stress this term 
“early-blooming”’ because of the confusion which has resulted from also using the 
designation “intermediate” in describing a low growing tall-bearded iris. The latter 
is not a true intermediate except in relation to height. 
The EARLY BLOOMING INTERMEDIATES are, generally speaking, the result 
of crossing dwarfs with tall bearded varieties and such hybrids are between the two 
in size, height and blooming season. Their height is between 16 and 28 inches and 
they have an unusual vivid clearness of coloring, altho the color range is much 
more limited than among the later flowering tall-bearded varieties. 
The intermediates are doubly valuable because they bloom at a period when there 
is a definite lull in the garden. Daffodils and spring-flowering shrubs are through 
blooming and altho tulips bloom ai this time, these are not happy everywhere and 
inclined to die out. Intermediate iris, on the other hand, have rugged constitutions 
and are generous in the profusion of bloom. The culture is the same as that of the 
tall-bearded. 
As an extra dividend, some of these intermediates bloom again in the fall, if 
conditions are favorable, which implies that the plants are not allowed to become 
crowded, that moisture has been sufficient for new growth and that the fall tempera- 
tures hold favorable for this second crop of flowers. 





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