1889, Iris Susiana by Wm. Falconer

The American Florist, p.385, April 1, 1889

Iris Susiana comes from Persia and Asia Minor. Large quantities of dried bulbs (rhizomes are imported every year into this country, sold, planted and most of them lost. They are quite cheap, especially at wholesale rates. It is useless to treat them as hardy plants for they are not satisfactory as such. Potted and treated as cool greenhouse plants or grown in well protected frames we get along with them first rate. It takes them a year to recover from the enervation of being dried off like tulips and kept dry so long; but if they fail to bloom the first year after imporliug, keep them over and growing all the time and winter them in a cool house or frame aud they will reward you with some of the largest and finest iris flowers you ever saw. Mine are in bloom now, end of February; they had been kept in a frostproof frame.

For more information on historic Irises visit the Historic Iris Preservation Society at

-- BobPries - 2014-10-30