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_.