Irises - Historic Iris Preservation Society

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LIBRARY
PREFACE
THE gardening world has recognised for some time past
that in the realm of Iris the mantle of the late Sir Michael
Foster descended upon the writer of this book and it will
confirm the succession. It is a good book written with
all the verve and freedom of accurate knowledge derived
from observation of the plants as they grow as well as from
study of their dried bones in collectors' herbaria an essential
combination for the elaboration of any sketch that is to
suggest claim to authority in such plants, and this book does
suggest and makes good its claim in this respect.
Not the most ardent enthusiast can pretend that Irisculture
attracts in our days with the intensity which the
intrinsic merit of the species should command, and in some
degree this lukewarmness may be ascribed to difficulties over
which no help has been obtainable from any concise but
not technical exposition of their forms and needs. The
facile rhizome with potential immortality of the Bearded
Iris has given
it a dominance in cultivation through which
it has become an obsession as the type of Iris, and it must
always have a prominent place in estimation, but the growthforms
of members of other groups Juno, for example
modify in no small measure the stereotyped concept of what
less demon-
is an Iris, and the daintiness, softer blendings,
strativeness of many of them ask for them a share of attenvU
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