Moraea alticola

Moraea alticola is a large plant compared to other members of the genus, also robust and hardy. It sometimes reaches 75 cm when in flower. Still, it is a rare plant being confined to a small, high altitude habitat. This remote grassland is often moist in summer, very cold in winter when these plants rest, confined to their underground corms.

M. alticola grows just one leaf from a corm, but clumps of several corms develop through the forming of small cormels in an underground ring like a subversive organisation around every mature corm. This is vegetative growth that displays identical attributes as the mother plant, unlike plants grown from seed. Once these cormels achieve sufficient size after a few years, they produce not only leaves, but flower stalks next to the mother plant in the clump.

The mother plant in the meantime grows a new corm each year on top of the old one. This growth comes from inside the dry leaf bases of the previous year, affording the corm a fibrous, protective covering. One corm and its direct successors may thus continue flowering annually for several years. Leaf-like spathes on the flower stalk enclosing the flower base, can be seen on the plant in picture.

The distribution of the species lies up in the KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape Drakensberg and parts of Lesotho. This plant was spotted in the Mkhomazi Wilderness Area, high up in the Drakensberg (iSpot; www.pacificbulbsociety.org).