ative of Afghanistan, but its
character, whether a biennial or perennial, is not yet ascertained.
The Afghans call it Zalil and the plant or root is used for dyeing
purposes. Some years ago we only knew blue, white and purple
larkspurs, and then California added two species with scarlet flowers.
The above is of a beautiful sulphur yellow, and, all in all, it is a
plant of remarkable beauty. From a rosette of much and deeply divided
leaves, rises a branched flower stem to about two feet; each branch
and branchlet ending in a beautiful spike of flowers each of about an
inch across and the whole spike showing all its flowers open at once.
It is likely to become a first rate standard plant of our gardens. To
have it in flower the very first year it must be sown very early, say
in January, in seed pans, and transplanted later, when it will flower
from the end of May until the end of July. Moreover, it can be sown
during spring and summer in the open air to flower the following year.
It is quite hardy here.

_Max Leichtlin._

Baden-Baden.

Iris tenuis.[1]

This pretty delicate species of Iris, Fig. 3, is a native of the
Cascade Mountains of Northern Oregon. Its long branching rootstocks
are scarcely more than a line in thickness, sending up sterile leafy
shoots and slender stems about a foot high. The leaves are thin and
pale green, rather taller than the stems, sword-shaped and half an
inch broad or more. The leaves of the stem are bract-like and distant,
the upper one or two subtending slender peduncles. The spathes are
short, very thin and scarious, and enclose the bases of their rather
small solitary flowers, which are "white, lightly striped and blotched
with yellow and purple." The sepals and petals are oblong-spatulate,
from a short tube, the sepals spreading, the shorter petals erect and
notched.

The peculiar habitat of this species doubtless accounts in good
measure for its slender habit and mode of growth. Mr. L. F. Henderson,
of Portland, Oregon, who discovered it in 1881, near a branch of the
Clackamas River called Eagle Creek, about thirty miles from Portland,
reports it as growing in the fir forests in broad mats, its very long
rootstocks running along near the surface of the ground, just covered
by moss or partly decayed fir-needles, with a light addition of soil.
This also would indicate the need of special care and treatment in its
cultivation. In May, 1884, Mr. Henderson took great pains to p