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(Last Modified On 6/6/2016)
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Acceptance
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Accepted
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(Last Modified On 8/18/2016)
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Description:
Plants 40–150 mm high, acaulescent, flowering without leaves. Corm ovoid-oblong, 10–15 mm diam.; tunics of relatively soft, brown, overlapping layers splitting above into slender cusps and below into segments. Stem underground, unbranched, sheathed. Leaves of flowering stem dry and often broken or lacking, foliage leaves produced after flowering on separate shoot, ultimately 2 or 3, basal leaf or leaves solitary or 2, falcate, ultimately 80–100 × 2–3 mm, probably centric and oval in section when alive, when dry main vein and margins appearing thickened, uppermost leaf entirely sheathing or with short unifacial tip. Spike 1- or 2(3)-flowered; bracts 10–22 mm long, green, often flushed purple. Flowers diurnal, salver-shaped, white to pink with dark throat, outer tepals sometimes tipped purple, feathered to uniformly red-purple to brown outside; perianth tube 5–10 mm long, narrowly funnel-shaped; tepals spreading, elliptic-ovate, 14–22 × 6–8 mm. Filaments erect, ± 1.5–3.0 mm long; anthers diverging, 6–8 mm long, yellow; pollen yellow. Style branches reaching to tips of anthers in closed flower. Capsules ovoid-oblong, 6–8 × 4–6 mm. Seeds flattened, narrowly winged, ± 2 × 1 mm. Flowering time: late September to mid November.
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Country:
South Africa, Lesotho
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South African Province:
Eastern Cape, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal
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Distribution and ecology:
occurring in Lesotho and South Africa in Eastern Cape, Free State and KwaZulu-Natal; in open places in wet turf and stony ground at higher elevations in the Drakensberg.
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Diagnosis:
Crocus-like Hesperantha schelpeana typically flowers on a short stem, the leaves of which are dry or absent and is distinguished in addition by the short tubed, relatively small flowers that appear in dry grassland. The perianth tube is up to 10 mm long and the tepals, 14–22 mm long, thus ± twice as long as the tube. New, green leaves are sometimes emergent at flowering, usually two in number and produced on a shoot separate from the flowers. The leaf blades are solid and oval in cross-section when alive but appear flat with a prominent main vein when dry. Flowers are usually white or pale pink with the outer tepals feathered red-purple outside but plants from The Sentinel on the Free State–Lesotho border in the Drakensberg, at the northern limit of the species, have pink flowers, shading darker at the tips of the tepals and with the throat dark brown, providing a stark contrast to the deep yellow anthers and pollen. The reverse of the outer tepals is so strongly feathered with brown as to appear nearly uniformly pigmented.
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General Notes:
the occasional presence of leaves at flowering time makes it possible to confuse Hesperantha schelpeana with H. candida, which flowers at the same time of year and has living, green leaves present on the flowering stem (unless destroyed by fire or grazing). Properly developed plants of H. candida have four leaves, two basal, and second sub-basal and partly sheathing and a short, sheathing leaf in the upper part of the stem. H. schelpeana, however, never has more than three leaves, the lowermost slender and exceeding the stem (when still present at flowering and then dry), the second much shorter, often largely sheathing, and a third, short, sheathing leaf usually present on the upper part of the stem. The leaf blades also differ: H. candida can be distinguished by the fairly broad leaves with plane blades with thickened and raised margins and midrib and the surface plane and smooth elsewhere.
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