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Encyclopedia Britannica

IRIDACEAE (the iris family)

This article appears in Volume V14, Page 794 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: INV-JED

IRIDACEAE (the iris family) , in botany, a natural order of flowering plants belonging to the

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

Liliiflorae of the class Monocotyledons, containing about Boo species in S7 genera, and widely distributed in temperate and tropical regions. The members of this order are generally perennial herbs growing from a corm as in Crocus and Gladiolus, or a rhizome as in Iris; more rarely, as in the Spanish iris, from a bulb. A few

South

SOUTH
SOUTH, ROBERT (1634–1716)

African

AFRICAN

representatives have a shrubby habit. The

flowers

FLOWERS, ARTIFICIAL

are hermaphrodite and

regular

REGULAR

as in Iris (fig. I) and Crocus (fig. 3), or with a symmetry in the median plane as in Gladiolus. The petaloid perianth consists of two

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

, each with three members; which are joined below into a longer or shorter tube, followed by one whorl of three stamens; the inferior ovary is three-celled and contains numerous ovules on an axile

placenta

PLACENTA (Lat. for a cake)

; the style is branched and the branches are often petaloid. The fruit (fig. 2) is a capsule opening between the partitions and containing generally a large number of roundish or angular seeds. The arrangement of the parts in the flower resembles that in the nearly allied order Amaryllidaceae (Narcissus, Snowdrop, &c.), but differs in the absence of the inner whorl of stamens.
The most important genera are Crocus (q.v.), with about 70species, Iris (q.v.), with about roo, and Gladiolus (q.v.), with 150. Ixia, Freesia (q.v.) and Tritonia (including Monlbretia),
1. Flower, from which the outer
petals and the stigmas have
been removed, leaving the
inner petals (a) and stamens.
2. Pistil with petaloid stigmas.
all natives of

South

SOUTH
SOUTH, ROBERT (1634–1716)

Africa, are well known in cultivation. Sisyrinchium, blue-eyed grass, is a new-world genus extending
from arctic America to Patagonia and the Falkland Isles. One
3. Fruit cut across showing the three chambers containing seeds.
4. A seed. 1-4 about ; nat. size.
species, S. angustifolium, an arctic and temperate North American species, is also native in

Galway

GALWAY

and

Kerry

KERRY

in Ireland. Other British representatives of the order are: Iris Pseudacorus, (yellow iris), common by river-banks and ditches, I. foetidissima (stinking iris), Gladiolus communis, a rare plant found in the New Forest and the Isle of Wight, and Romulea Columnae, a small plant with narrow recurved leaves a few inches

long

LONG, GEORGE (1800-1879)
LONG, JOHN DAVIS (1838– )

and a short scape bearing one or more small

regular

REGULAR

funnel-shaped

flowers

FLOWERS, ARTIFICIAL

, which occurs at

Dawlish

DAWLISH

in Devonshire.

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