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(Last Modified On 1/14/2017)
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Description:
Plants slender, 350–450 mm high, often growing in clumps, with cataphylls often dry. Corm 14–20 mm diam.; tunics brownish, coriaceous or decaying into medium to fine vertical fibers extending upward in a collar. Leaves 5 or 6, sometimes 7, lower 2 basal and longest, with blades reaching at least to spike base, sometimes exceeding it by up to 100 mm, blades 1–2(–3) mm wide, either linear with heavily thickened and raised margins and main veins and narrow laminar grooves, or terete and four-grooved, remaining leaves cauline, imbricate, shorter and partly to entirely sheathing, blades often thread-like, brown-streaked or dry entirely above, imbricate. Stem simple or with a single, often short branch, this always borne in axil of penultimate sheathing leaf, erect or flexed outward above uppermost sheath, usually concealed for all but upper 20–30 mm. Spike (3–)5- to 8-flowered, inclined or suberect; bracts green, sometimes flushed purple, or purple at least on veins, or evidently dry and brownish, 10–15 mm long, outer sometimes with apex filiform and attenuate, inner as long or slightly shorter than outer. Flowers usually pale lilac, pink, or cream to yellow, lower tepals each with either dark blue to purple or dark yellow diamond-shaped mark outlined in a darker color in upper half; perianth tube 8–12 mm long, curved outward and emerging between bracts; tepals unequal, dorsal largest, hooded over stamens, c. 14 x c. 10 mm, upper laterals directed forward and curving outward distally, c. 10 mm long, lower 3 held close together and more or less horizontal or tilted downward, united with upper laterals for 3–4 mm, c. 1.5 mm long, narrowed below into claws, limbs c. 3 wide. Filaments 11–14 mm long, unilateral, arcuate, exserted 6–7 mm from tube; anthers parallel, 4.5–5.5 mm long, yellow. Ovary 1.5–2 mm long; style arching over filaments, dividing near anther apices, branches 1.5–2 mm long, ultimately reaching or exceeding anther apices. Capsules more or less globose, 5–6 mm long, showing seed outline; seeds angular, c. 1 mm diam. Flowering time: mainly February to April, sometimes in January or as late as June.
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Democratic Republic of the Congo Provinces:
Katanga (Shaba)
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Distribution and ecology:
fairly widespread in Katanga Province of Congo, extending from the Upemba Plateau in the north across the Biano Plateau into the southern part of the province, where it seems to be restricted to rocky sites in areas with heavy-metal-enriched-substrates; in fairly dry sites in open savanna and stony grassland with stunted shrubs. The flowering in February to April seems to be the norm for populations on heavy-metal-enriched soils, but even there plants have been collected as early as January and as late as May. Plants from normal soils on the Manika Plateau have been collected in flower from March to June. There is little or no difference in the morphology of plants that bloom in the early, middle, or late part of the season.
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Diagnosis:
Gladiolus ledoctei includes plaanys that have in common two or three linear to terete basal leaves and two to five cauline and partly to entirely sheathing leaves that conceal all but the upper 2–3 cm of the stem, even sometimes reaching to the middle of the spike. In addition, the plants have brownish and membranous to fibrous tunics that accumulate in a collar around the base, small but relatively long-tubed flowers, and globose capsules with angular seeds. Plants with a more robust habit were described as G. fungurumeensis from Fungurume, with thicker leaves, three or four sheathing leaves, the uppermost often reaching the base of the erect spike, and sometimes with a short lateral branch. There seems little reason to continue to separate the two. Gladiolus ledoctei is probably no more than a local variant, known only from the type locality, of a fairly widespread species that extends beyond heavy-metal-enriched sites into interior Katanga. In this expanded view of G. ledoctei plants from the Upemba Plateau with a habit virtually identical with the type of G. fungurumeensis but having linear leaves with thickened and raised margins and midribs are also included here. The plants of heavy-metal soils are seen as variants of this form, with the leaves narrower and the midribs more heavily thickened so that they are terete and four-sulcate. There is also some variation in flower color. Flowers of the type forms of both G. ledoctei and G. fungurumeensis have pale bluish with purple markings, but there are populations of both linear- and terete-leaved plants that have yellow flowers with deeper yellow markings on the lower tepals.
Gladiolus ledoctei appears to be most closely related to the nothern South African and eastern Botswanan G. pretoriensis, which is similar in habit and has both basal laminate leaves with either linear or terete blades, sometimes on the same plants, and partly to entirely sheathing cauline leaves, the latter less closely set than in G. ledoctei. Gladiolus pretoriensis also has partly to entirely dry floral bracts, angular seeds, and brownish corm tunics that accumulate in a neck at the base. There seems to be a trend for reduction in leaf number among the Shaban species related to this group. Thus G. robiliartianus has just three foliage leaves and no sheathing leaves, and G. tshombeanus has only two leaves, both largely sheathing.
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