Tropicos | Name - !Babiana angustifolia Sweet

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Iridaceae in sub-Saharan Africa

African Iridaceae > Iridaceae > Babiana > Babiana angustifolia

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!Babiana angustifolia Sweet

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Project Name Data (Last Modified On 11/23/2016)

Acceptance : Accepted

Taxon Profile (Last Modified On 11/23/2016)

Description : Plants mostly 100–150 mm high. Stem velvety, usually unbranched, strongly deflexed. Leaves lanceolate, strongly pleated, stiffly erect, minutely velvety, inclined. Spike inclined, secund, 2–8-flowered; bracts green, rusty at tips, velvety, 12–14 mm long, outer ± tricuspidate or trilobed apically, inner often slightly shorter than outer, divided to base. Flowers zygomorphic, inverted with perianth tube recurved, dorsal tepal horizontal, unilateral stamens curved back to lie above dorsal tepal and lower tepals suberect, dark blue to violet or purple, lower 3 tepals with black or red spear-shaped markings; perianth tube curved, narrowly funnel-shaped, 11–17 mm long; tepals subequal, cupped, 20–22 mm long, dorsal hardly different from others, to 12 mm wide. Stamens unilateral; filaments arching over dorsal tepal, 8–10 mm long; anthers linear, facing spike apex, 4.5–6 mm long, blackish. Ovary densely hairy; style arching beneath stamens, dividing opposite anther apices, branches 4–5 mm long, with cuneate tips. Flowering time: August and September.

Country : South Africa

South African Province : Western Cape

Distribution and ecology : extending from Porterville in the north to Somerset West in the south, in Western Cape, South Africa; on damp to seasonally wet sandy or loamy flats and lower slopes.

Diagnosis : Babiana angustifolia is recognized by the dark blue perianth with relatively broad, subequal tepals held in a shallow cup enclosing the stamens and style. The perianth is inverted so that the dorsal tepal and arched stamens face the spike apex, unusual in Babiana, shared with few other species. The lower tepals of the darkly pigmented perianth have blackish or occasionally dark red spear-shaped marks in the lower midline and this together with the blackish anthers gives the flowers a distinctive appearance. The flowers are often visited by hopliine scarab beetles, sometimes seen resting for long periods in the base of the floral cup, and these beetles may be the primary pollinators of B. angustifolia.

General Notes : the species was treated as Babiana pulchra by Lewis (1959), a combination based on Acaste pulchra Salisbury which, as pointed out by Nordenstam (1970), is a nomen nudum, and thus invalid as is Lewis’s combination in Babiana. This plant thus takes the name Babiana angustifolia Sweet (1827) based on an illustration in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine entitled B. stricta var. α. The plants on which the illustration were based were said to have been introduced by the Kew Gardens collector, Francis Masson. Lewis’s broader concept of B. angustifolia included plants from the Piketberg and Porterville Districts now treated as B. inclinata, which also inverted flowers but narrower tepals not overlapping to form a floral cup, and pale mauve to white anthers.