Disa cooperi flowers

The flowers of Disa cooperi grow densely clustered in a cylindrical spike that has a few oblong leaves scattered along the stout stalk below the flowers. In continuation of these leaves an oblong green and white bract is present below every flower on the stalk.

The flowers face down or obliquely down, the olive-green, spade-shaped lip the lowest parts of each. The variably curving floral spurs point jauntily upwards and skew from the backs of the median or dorsal sepals. The spurs are about 4 cm long, narrow and tapering towards their tips. The dorsal sepals form rounded hoods around the central floral parts. D. cooperi flowers are among the non-resupinate disas, the lips not twisted down. Each flower has a short column in its centre. The anther is reflexed, the stigma is thickened and the rostellum between these two is three-lobed. The lateral sepals are pale pinkish in the photo.

D. cooperi flowers are fragrant at night, the pollinators hawkmoths. Such moths, properly called Basiothia schenki, have evolved proboscises and matching instinctual behaviour evolved over countless generations for finding the nectar hidden in the floral spurs. The pointy spurs in picture are cream-coloured. They may on some plants also be shades of pink or reddish purple. 

Flowering happens from late spring through summer (Manning, 2009; Pooley, 1998; iNaturalist; JSTOR; www.tgenade.freeshell.org).