Moraea

The Moraea genus are corm-based perennials, sometimes stemless, producing annual leaves and flower stems above-ground. Irises, non-South African members of the Iridaceae family found in the northern hemisphere don’t grow from corms, but have creeping rhizomes or bulbs. The Moraea corm is wrapped in a coarsely fibrous, sometimes woody tunic and usually annually replaced by a new corm.

Moraea leaves, varying in number among the members of the genus, are often grass-like and channelled without midribs; their margins sometimes rolled in or crisped. The lowermost leaf (or two of them) is often a membranous cataphyll.

The inflorescences are terminal and branched, the branching shape called a rhipidium (plural rhipidia). Rhipidium is a term referring to the particular cyme-shape in which successive pedicels follow a zigzag path of buds positioned alternately on opposite sides of the peduncle.

Two pale brown spathes usually envelop the flower base, the inner one larger. The spathes are leathery and leaf-like, holding the cup-shaped to star-like corollas firmly.

The radially symmetric (actinomorphic) flower shapes found in the Moraea genus remind of their family, the Iridaceae. The six tepals are usually separate, in few species connected in a short tube, the basal claws varying in length. The inner whorl of three tepals is smaller in some species, varying between narrow, three-tipped, thread-like, hair-like or absent.

The filaments of the stamens are commonly joined in one column, separate in a few species. The style branches usually start low down from a thread-like base. They are sometimes flattened like "extra" petals, in other species thread-like.

The Moraea fruit is an oblong to ovoid capsule, covered in a leathery or nearly membranous skin.

There are more than 220 Moraea species, most of them in Africa south of the Sahara with a preponderance of species, about 180 of them found in the Cape winter rainfall region. All these plants normally grow in the open, not in forests.

The plant in picture is a yellow-flowering Moraea, seen north of Springbok in Namaqualand next to the main road, flowering during August. The yellow flowers point upwards with green nectar guides on the six spreading tepals. Efforts to identify the species were unsuccessful thus far (Manning, 2009; Leistner, (Ed.), 2000; iNaturalist; iSpot; Wikipedia).