Tropicos | Name - !Ferraria welwitschii Baker

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Iridaceae in sub-Saharan Africa

African Iridaceae > Iridaceae > Ferraria > Ferraria welwitschii

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!Ferraria welwitschii Baker

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Project Name Data (Last Modified On 7/18/2016)

Acceptance : Accepted

Taxon Profile (Last Modified On 7/18/2016)

Description: Plants (120–)180–350 mm high. Stem exposed above sheaths of lower leaves; upper nodes and distal parts of internodes sticky, often with sand adhering. Leaves of flowering plants sheathing, occasionally with short blades shorter than sheaths; of vegetative plants (1)2, narrowly sword-shaped, straight or falcate, 1.5–3.0 mm wide, with visible main vein. Rhipidia 4- or 5-flowered; inner spathe 20–34 mm long, outer entirely sheathing, mostly 1/2 to ± 2/3 as long as inner, 10–17 mm. Flowers on pedicels about as long as spathes; lasting a single day, pale to dull yellow to buff (?also orange) with brown to dark red or dull green spots on limbs and distal part of claws, evidently odourless, tepals ascending, claws forming a cup, 7–9 mm deep, ± 7 mm wide at rim, limbs spreading to reflexed up to 40º, margins crisped, nectaries dark brown, ± 1.5 × 2 mm, ± in centre of claws; outer tepals 15–20 × ± 5 mm, inner 14–20 mm long. Stamens with filaments united in a column 5.0–7.5 mm long, free in upper 1.0–1.5 mm; anther thecae parallel or diverging basally, 1.5–2.5 mm long, slightly shorter after anthesis. Ovary usually exserted, oblong to narrowly ovoid, 2–3 mm long; style branches 1.5–2.0 mm long, dividing into diverging, fringed arms; stigmas terminal on style arms. Capsules globose-truncate, mostly 5–7 mm long, exserted from spathes, smooth or minutely warty (Mendes 1957). Seeds angular, ± prismatic, 3 mm long, glossy, brown with pale, raised angles, ± 5-sided, facet surfaces undulate to wrinkled. Flowering time: mostly October to early December (early January).

Country: Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Congo (DR)

Distribution and ecology: extending across a wide belt of central Africa from the Malange highlands in west-central Angola across Zambia to southern Congo and Zimbabwe; records indicate that plants grow on the margins of open woodland, often in rocky ground and in fairly moist habitats, including riverbanks and dambos.

Diagnosis: the type collection of Ferraria welwitschii is a pencil drawing of a plant cultivated in Britain, with one of the tepals coloured. The plant evidently stood ± 300 cm high, lacked developed basal foliage leaves and had flowers with reflexed, dull yellow tepal limbs covered with fine, dark brown spots. Friedrich Welwitsch is believed to have collected the plant but the original locality is not recorded. Plants matching this collection, although not always as tall, have been recorded widely across Angola, Zambia, Congo and parts of Zimbabwe, always flowering early in the wet season, October to mid-December, and consistently lacking well-developed foliage leaves. Even those specimens in fruit (e.g. Cruse s.n. from Zambia collected in late December) lack foliage leaves; other collections (e.g. Mendes 1957 from Angola in fruit in January) have short, narrow foliage leaves emerging at the base, evidently representing late-developing foliage leaves on a shoot lateral to the main axis. It is clear that flowering plants do not produce leaves later in the season but rely on the stems and sheathing leaves for photosynthesis and production of storage carbohydrates for the new corms developed after flowering. This pattern recalls tropical African Gladiolus unguiculatus Baker; flowering and fruiting specimens of this species have short or vestigial foliage leaves but plants remain green even after the capsules have ripened and the seeds are shed in December. Corms of both species eventually produce new foliage leaves after the capsules have ripened from shoots lateral to the fruiting axis. Vegetative specimens of F. spithamea have one or more well-developed leaves and one or two smaller leaves in a basal tuft. Evidently the closely allied Ferraria spithamaea from southwestern Angola has a similar growth form, but the yellow tepals lack the characteristic small dark spots, have at best undulate margins (never crisped), and the style branches lack the feathery fringes of all other Ferraria species.