Card of the Day - 2022-06-05

The cards tell us that these flowers were described by the Editor of "Amateur Gardening", and at the time of the set`s issue that was A.J. Macself, who had been the assistant editor, and took the chair in 1926, when the editor incumbent, T.W. Sanders, had died.

Albert James Macself had been born in 1878, and he became a valued member of the Hardy Plant Society, his great love being ferns, but he wrote many books on plants and gardening as well as edit the magazine. He edited his last magazine in 1946 and died in 1952.

Actually he was older than Amateur Gardening, but not by much, as the weekly magazine had started in May 1884, which does indeed make it the longest running amateur gardening weekly in the United Kingdom. 

The reason for this card is that irises are also known as flags, in some cases it appears as part of their official name, but it actually refers to their shape, not the similarity in noise to the flapping of a flag and the flapping of their long petals in the breeze, but to their leaves, and it is actually nothing to do with flags at all, for the word “flagge” comes all the way up from Old English, and means a rush or a reed, which applies to the shape of their leaves. This is also strangely interconnected to their habitat, because just like rushes, and reeds, the true flag iris is wild and grows in swamps, which makes them an ideal spot of colour for a pond.  

In 1950 The London Cigarette Card Company listed these cards at a penny each for odds, and four shillings for complete sets, whilst freely admitting that they were cheaper in the Abridged Catalogue.