This Portugall Flowerdeluce is very like the common purple Flowerdeluce, but that this is not so large in leaues, or flowers, and that it doth often flower twice in a yeare, that is, both in the Spring, and in the Autumne againe, and besides, the flowers haue a better or sweeter sent, but of the like purple or Violet colour as it is, and comming forth out of purplish skins or huskes.
Iris Camerarij siue purpurea versicolor maior. The greater variable coloured purple Flowerdeluce.
The greater of the variable purple Flowerdeluces, hath very broad leaues, like vnto the leaues of the common purple Flowerdeluce, and so is the flower also, but differing in colour, for the three lower leaues are of a deepe purple colour tending to rednesse, the three arched leaues are of the colour with the vpper leaues, which are of a pale or bleake colour tending to yellownesse, shadowed ouer with a smoakie purplish colour, except the ridges of the arched leaues, which are of a more liuely purple colour.
Iris purpurea versicolor minor. The lesser variable purple Flowerdeluce.
This Flowerdeluce differeth not in any thing from the last, but onely that it hath narrower greene leaues, and smaller and narrower flowers, else if they be both conferred together, the colours will not seeme to varie the one from the other any whit at all.
Altera minus fuliginea.
There is another somewhat neare vnto these two last kindes, whose huskes from whence the flowers doe shoote forth, haue purple veines in them, and so haue the falling purplish leaues, and the three vpright leaues are not so smoakie, yet of a dun purple colour.
Iris cærulea versicolor. The blew party coloured Flowerdeluce.
This party coloured Flowerdeluce hath his leaues of the same largenesse, with the lesser variable purple Flowerdeluce last described, and his flowers diuersly marked: for some haue the fals blew at the edges, and whitish at the bottome, the arched leaues of a yellowish white, and the vpright leaues of a whitish blew, with yellowish edges. Some againe are of a darker blew, with brownish spots in them. And some are so pale a blew, that we may well call it an ash-colour: And lastly, there is another of this sort, whose vpright leaues are of a faire pale blew, with yellowish edges, and the falling leaues parted into two colours, sometimes equally in the halfe, each side sutable to the other in colour: And sometimes hauing the one leafe in that manner: And sometimes but with a diuers coloured list in them; in the other parts both of flower and leafe, like vnto the other.