IRIDACEAE (the

See also:

• IRIS

iris

See also:

• FAMILY

family)  , in botany, a natural order of flowering plants belonging to the series 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 African representatives have a shrubby habit . The flowers are hermaphrodite and 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, 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; 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 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 and 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 and a short scape bearing one or more small regular funnel-shaped flowers, which occurs at Dawlish in Devonshire .