The culture of this Japan Iris is very simple and well worth while, for the species comes into bloom in late June and early July, when the German and other kinds are through.  I should dig the wet soil from the spot of which you speak, for all muck is not good for this Iris, and after mixing it with some good loam and well-rotted cow manure replace it and plant the clumps of Iris two feet apart, for they will spread wonderfully.  In late autumn they should have a top dressing of manure and a covering of corn stalks, but, mind, water must not stand on your Iris bed in winter; treating them as hardy plants does not warrant their being plunged into water ice.  It is almost impossible, however, to give them too much water in June and July, when the great flowers of rainbow hues, spreading to a size that covers two open hands, cry for drink to sustain the exhaustion of their marvellous growth.  So if your “squashy spot” is made so by spring rains, all is well; if not, it must be drained in some easy way, like running a length of clay pipe beneath, so that the overplus of water will flow off when the Iris growth cannot absorb it.

Ah me! the very mention of this flower calls up endless visions of beauty.  Iris—­the flower of mythology, history, and one might almost say science as well, since its outline points to the north on the face of the mariner’s compass; the flower that in the dawn of recorded beauty antedates the rose, the fragments of the scattered rainbow of creation that rests upon the garden, not for a single hour or day or week, but for a long season.  The early bulbous Iris histriodes begins the season in March, and the Persian Iris follows in April.  In May comes the sturdy German Iris of old gardens, of few species but every one worthy, and to be relied upon in mass of bloom and sturdy leafage to rival even the peony in decorative effect.  Next the meadows are ribboned by our own blue flags; and the English Iris follows and in June and July meets the sumptuous Iris of Japan at its blooming season, for there seems to be no country so poor as to be without an Iris.

There are joyous flowers of gold and royal blue, the Flower de Luce (Flower of Louis) of regal France, and sombre flowers draped in deep green and black and dusky purple, “The widow” (Iris tuberosa) and the Chalcedonian Iris (Iris Susiana), taking its name from the Persian Susa. Iris Florentina by its powdered root yields the delicate violet perfume orris, a corruption doubtless of Iris.

Many forms of root as well as blossom has the Iris, tuberous, bulbous, fibrous, and if the rose may have a garden to itself, why may not the Iris in combination with its sister lilies have one also?  And when my eyes rest upon a bed of these flowers or upon a single blossom, I long to be a poet.

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