Of late years iris, dethroned from an honourable place in medicine, has come much into fashion as a garden flower. Not without reason, many sorts are easy for the amateur to cultivate, and all are very effective. The variety among them is enormous; not only are there in the hands of growers many comparatively new discoveries from North Africa, Central Asia, Asia Minor, and South Europe, but the improving and altering of all the families, new and old, has made the varieties wonderful both in number and beauty now. Large quantities of iris are grown in Holland, some of the rarer sorts and still more of the cheap and well-known kinds. In June one may see fields of Spanish Iris (Iris xiphion), exquisite, delicately-tinted flowers, quivering at the top of their grey-green stalks. Blooming, as they do, when most of the other bulb flowers are over, and when, in the early days of the industry, most of the fields must have been rather bare, they have a separate and special attraction. They are very nearly hardy bulbs, and withstand the winter’s cold with little protection. They are little trouble in the growing, and are lifted at the end of July, when the greater number of other bulbs are already harvested. They increase fairly well, and the young ones have the further advantage of coming to maturity in a comparatively short time. New varieties, as is almost invariably the case with bulbs, are obtained from seed. One may often see small patches of new sorts, of which the grower has hope, flowering beside large quantities of the established kind, this for the sake of comparison, and to determine if the new is really new, and has anything worthy of preservation. The original bulb of Spain is said to have been blue flowered, the yellow influence coming from Portugal; but the crossing and blending of the two, whether started by art or nature, was begun too far back to be recorded. It is impossible to trace the history of many of the innumerable and beautiful shades and blends that exist now.
Iris anglica is another striking feature of the bulb gardens in early summer, coming into flower just when the Spanish are over, and presenting a more gorgeous and striking effect. It is a native of the Pyrenees, and no relation in root or anything else to the tuberous-rooted flag-irises of England. The Dutch growers had it, in the first instance, from English sailors or merchants, and either mistook its place of origin or named it after the nation from whom they received it. The flowers, with the extraordinary variety they show, their somewhat stiff method of growth and great development, are decidedly more typical of the nation of gardeners than of the nation whose name they bear.
Among the irises, both bulbous and tuberous, now grown in Holland I regret to say I have not been able to identify the iris of Clusius—“Clusius his first great Flowerdeluce.” “This Flowerdeluce hath divers long and broad leaves, not stiff like all the others, but soft and greenish on the upper side, and whitish underneath.” The flower was “of a fair blue, a pale sky colour in most,” and showed in the six lower petals a tendency to turn up at the edges, the three smaller and upper of these parting at the lip and standing up “like unto two small ears.” The description of the flower reads a little like a Spanish Iris, and the native place was clearly Spain; but the leaves sound quite different to those of the Spanish as we know it, also the time of blooming is placed too early. The flower is described as very sweet of scent, and “the root is reasonable great.” Doubtless, towards the close of the sixteenth century it was to have been seen blooming in the famous garden at Leyden; perhaps some descendants are still to be found in that city, yearly honouring the great man who named them, and helped to make the city famous. But in none of the gardens round Haarlem have I seen it, and in no grower’s catalogue does it figure, at all events under its original name.
Irises, besides being among the latest of the bulb flowers, are almost among the earliest. In early March one may see Iris reticulata, Bakeriana, histroides, and a few other delicate-looking specimens blooming in surroundings which look singularly unsuitable to them. But these, as yet, are very little grown, are somewhat costly, and still in appearance something reminiscent of their Asiatic homes. None of them are recorded to be natives of Europe, although I myself have seen irises surprisingly like Iris reticulata, which were found by their present owner growing wild in Spain. They were, when I saw them, blooming under a north wall in a garden not far from the Scottish border, this in a March blizzard, and they had done so for some four years in succession. In colour, shape, and scent they were exactly like reticulata, but whether or no they were truly so I cannot say.
SPANISH IRISES
Among the more striking of the flowers to be seen in Holland now, Iris susiana certainly deserves mention. It is not a bulb iris but a spreading rhizome, in growth more like the Iris germanica, though in appearance quite unlike. It was introduced into Holland somewhere about 1570, and has been grown there practically without development or variation ever since, but the days of its market popularity are comparatively recent. Twenty years ago it is doubtful if there were fifty of the strange flowers (they look rather as if they were made of Japanese newspaper) to be found outside the Dutch gardens. Certainly in England they were then very little known. And yet Parkinson, writing in 1629, gives them an important place among the then known irises. There can be no doubt whatever that the Iris susiana of to-day is what he calls the Great Turkey Flowerdeluce, “the roots whereof,” he tells us, “have been sent out of Turkey divers times among other things, and it would seem that they have had their original from about Sufis, a chief city of Persia.” His description of the flower tallies exactly, and he notes the peculiarity that the petals “being laid in water will colour the water into a violet colour, but if a little Allome be put therein, and then wrung or pressed, and the juice of these leaves dryed in the shadow, they will give a colour almost as deep as Indigo, and may be used for shadows in limning excellent well.” The flower of the Iris susiana, if left in water or even allowed to rot in the ordinary way, produces a very strongly-coloured juice of a bluish violet tint. There really is no room to doubt that the two irises are the same, though how it happened that the then and now valued flower went so out of English cultivation, almost out of English knowledge, it is difficult to say. One imagines that there came a time when no one appreciated its “singularity and rarity”—the only charms it has to offer—and it was allowed to die out. Without care, of course, it would not thrive or increase. It seldom bears seeds in these colder countries, and the very few that are occasionally borne never ripen. And it would hardly have increased by spreading,—as a rhizome if left undisturbed for long it would always die in the centre of every clump it formed, only living at the edges, and in an unpropitious climate and circumstances it would speedily dwindle away. Anyhow, it would seem to have happened, the Great Turkey Flowerdeluce left us, to return Iris susiana many years later, when the tide of taste, which has changed many things and relegated the formerly admired hyacinth to a secondary place, has put all irises into fashion, and exalted this neglected flower to favour and admiration. Such a fate has occurred before this to flowers and books and men; to the books it matters little, they have time to ripen; to the men—post cineras gloria sera venit.
CHAPTER IV
SOME OLD FAVOURITES AND NEW
Exactly what influences favour in flowers, or indeed in most other things, it is hard to say; no Dutch bulb-grower ever attempts to do so. It may interest the leisurely student of mankind to discover the causes and trends of fashion, but the grower asks little or nothing about it, he merely accepts the evidence of his carefully-kept books, and the character of the attention given to some certain flower or groups of flowers at the shows, and sets himself to supply the demand that has arisen, or is about to arise. He may regret, if he is an old man with old-fashioned tastes, that popular liking has deserted Ranunculus asiaticus. He may, if he is a young man, himself sharing the general taste, prefer the dark-eyed Anemone coronaria to the rosetted flowers of earlier favour. But he will certainly give greater space to the latter now. Both of these two are grown in Holland, and both in something the same manner, though ranunculi want a heavier and moister soil than anemones. There is one kind of ranunculus, the Turban ranunculus, which is planted in December and covered rather thickly to protect it from frost, but the asiaticus is treated just as anemones are. Both are set in early spring, both harvested in August; both are strikingly beautiful when in flower, making very gorgeous stripes of colour in the garden where they are. Both are old flowers in Holland, they were certainly there by the middle of the sixteenth century; we in England had anemones from thence somewhere about 1596, ranunculi probably not much later. Both have been much cultivated and varied; but the one, Ranunculus asiaticus, is curiously out of favour, especially in England. Fifty or sixty years ago there were as many as eight or nine hundred varieties catalogued, now there are not as many dozen. In England we know that the early Victorians approved the ranunculus; indeed, in the old Language of Flowers the scentless rosette blossoms are given an honourable place. An admirer giving a bunch (we do not conceive of anyone giving them now, unless it is one grower to another similarly interested)—an admirer giving them in 1840 could convey the compliment, “You are radiant with charms.” In the opinion of those times “the dazzling Ranunculus adorns our gardens with its brilliant flowers, glowing with a thousand colours, resplendent with a thousand charms. Scarcely any plant affords so rich a view.” Now we think quite otherwise.