30 



PLATE 299. 



MoR^A iRiDioiDBS, Linn. (Fl. Cap. Vol. VI., p. 26). 

 Natural Order, iRiDEiE. 



A perennial plant growing in dense clumps and bearing flowers wMch are 

 white with orange-brown and violet markings. Rhizome short creeping. Leaves 

 in crowded fan-shaped basal rosettes, equifant, dark green, rigid in texture, quite 

 glabrous, erect broadly linear ; 2 to 4 feet long, ^ to f inch broad. Flowering 

 stems equalling or exceeding the leaves in height, erect, with many short, sheath- 

 ing lanceolate rudimentary leaves, one at each node, the lowest longest, gradually 

 becoming shorter upwards ; sometimes branching below the apex. Spathes 

 cylindrical, enclosing 3 or more flowers ; valves 2, green, very rigid, outer one 

 smaller, both rounded at apex. Perianth 6-parted, spreading, fringed at apex, the 

 3 outer segments white with orange-yellow keel, and markings near the base, where 

 the keel is very densely pilose; If to 2 inches long, 1 to 1|- inch wide in centre ; 

 3 inner ones narrower with brownish yellow markings and whitish hairs at base of 

 claw; 1^ to 2 inches long, f to 1 inch wide in centre. Ovary cylindrical, 8 lines 

 long. Style and filaments joined in a tube at base, the free portion of the fila- 

 ments very short, anthers linear, 2-celled, opening outwards ; stigmas 3, petaloid 

 and crested, the crests lanceolate, erecto-patent, deeply bi-fid, with broad violet 

 central band ; exceeding 1 inch in length, 4 to 5 lines wide in centre. Capsule 

 ellipsoid, loculicidal, obtusely angled, 1 to 1^ inch long. Seeds black, glabrous, 

 angled by pressure. 



Habitat : Natal : Groenberg, 2,000 feet alt, 'hood 1099 ; near Pinetown, 1,000 

 feet alt, Wood. Also found in Cape Colony, Transvaal, and Zambesi country. 



Drawn and described from specimens brought from Groenberg and grown in 

 Botanic Gardens, Durban, flowering during the summer until April. 



This is the largest flowered Moraea that we have in the Colony, and the hand- 

 somest, when once planted in the garden it grows without attention and forms 

 large clumps two or three feet in diameter and is well worth cultivation. It 

 differs from the description of M. iridioides in the Flora Capensis, in the length of 

 its leaves and size and colouring of the flowers, and appears to us to be a very 

 luxuriant variety, the type with smaller flowers and usually with procumbent 

 stems is plentiful on the coast and in the midlands, and probably in the upper 

 districts also. 



Fig. ], flower, perianth removed ; 2, fruit; 3, cluster of leaves with flowering 

 stems; reduced; figs. 1, 2 enlarged. 



