Bobartia fasciculata inflorescence

This Bobartia fasciculata inflorescence was photographed near Tulbagh. The flowers grow in a terminal head, densely clustered at the tip of a long, leafless stem.

The head is in the form of a rhipidium, which is a fan-shaped cyme with lateral branches developed alternately on the two sides. (A cyme is an inflorescence in which each flower is formed in turn at the tip of a growing axis, and further flowers are formed on branches below it). Still, a dense cluster!

The leaf-like spathes at the inflorescence base are brown, dry and chaffy, the inner one exceeding the outer. The individual flower bracts are membranous (Leistner, (Ed.), 2000; Bond and Goldblatt, 1984; iNaturalist).