Irises - Historic Iris Preservation Society

THE RETICULATA GROUP 9
In theory and in the text-books, the bee or other insect
pushes his way obligingly down the tunnel, collects pollen
on his back from the anthers, and deposits some of it
on the
stigma in the next tunnel that he enters. In practice, however,
the bee is apt to take short cuts, and may be observed
time after time forcing himself in between style and fall
near the base of the tunnel and so avoiding both anther and
stigma. Occasionally a bee is unenterprising and does the
expected, and then pollination is effected, if he happens to
have Iris pollen on his back. This, again, is a point in
which the text-books do not agree with fact, for a little
observation in the garden on a sunny day will soon prove
that a bee does not on each expedition from the hive confine
himself to the flowers of one particular species or genus.
Insects cannot therefore be relied upon to fertilise Irises,
and the result is that, in cultivation in England at any rate,
and these are
only certain species set seed at all readily,
precisely those in which a certain formation of the stigma
makes self-pollination not only possible, but probable and
even almost necessaryĊHAPTER
III
BULBOUS IRISES
I. THE RETICULATA GROUP
THIS group of winter or early spring flowering Irises
comprises those species in which the bulbs are covered