The Iris

A bulbous flower whose genus belongs to the lily. This family has been found on the northern shores of the Mediterranean and in the East (Levant), Armenia, the Caucasus, Persia, Central Asia, and Afghanistan.

This flower entered Europe in the middle of the sixteenth century from the East, most of it from Constantinople by way of Vienna and Venice. Around the year 1635 it was being planted in enormous quantities, especially in Holland. And today, though it is not found in every garden, the fine varieties have specialists devoted to planting and tending them. There is an amusing story of an English merchant who received a quantity of the bulbs and cooked them, believing them to be ordinary cooking onions. And there are certain inhabitants of Persia and Afghanistan who use the bulbs of this flower in their cooking to this very day.

The flower is shaped like a cup, with six segments arranged in two rows and three tubes for carrying nourishment. It comes in varieties that differ from one another on the inside: it may be rough, or smooth, or woolly to the touch, and it differs also according to the varieties and the color of the bloom. The Europeans carried it into their gardens three centuries ago for the beauty of its kinds and colors. The European flower differs from the Eastern one because of the pollen that has reached it from certain flowers around it, so that it has become varied in color and has nearly lost its Eastern origin. There is the crimson-colored sort, first found in the Caspian region, and then the yellow-colored one, which lived and still lives in England. In recent years Russian botanists discovered a great quantity of it in the lands of Turkestan and carried some of it to Europe. Here it is feared that the new families may be crossed with the old, so that they lose their original color and their Eastern qualities; and then it becomes difficult to tell them apart from the European flower. Then there is another difficulty, apart from pollination, that besets the new flower on the side of planting and manuring, which affect it and alter its color and kind to a degree that makes it hard to recognize its original color. This flower has spread through Europe so enormously that its price has become cheap on account of its abundance.

The growth of this family of flowers is a curious thing in its way. In the spring, at the time the bloom ripens, the bulb forms as a complete unit and contains the season's bulb, which bears the flower and the leaves.

And from the stems of that flowering bulb another bulb emerges, forming leaves and flowers for the new season; and from this one, in turn, a third sprouts, to put out leaves and flowers and bear its fruit for the third season. Thus every bulb lives three years, gives its last flower in the third year, and dies. Accordingly, the bulb planted in the autumn is not the same one that flowered in the spring, but a second season's...

Then there are the flowers whose origin is seed. When these bloom for the first time they carry a single natural color. After the specialists had studied this kind, it was found that the blooms are either of the good sort or the poor sort — either of a pure white, or a mixture of the two colors white and yellow at the stem. The poor sort, or the mixture of the two colors mentioned, is thrown out, while the good, pure sort is carried to special gardens to be cared for by the specialists. This kind is called breeder bulbs. These live for years and yield blooms in their first natural colors; but after an unfixed length of time the bulbs break and give blooms of various colors, striped with crimson, or red, or violet, sometimes shot through with pink. The petals of the flower, six in number, are broad at the top and smooth-edged, and they lie so close to one another that the beholder almost thinks them joined together. And the bulbs must not be exposed to anything that would cause spots on them, for such bulbs lose their value.