Hesperantha bachmannii half-closed

These modest flowers of the Biedouw Valley may be Hesperantha bachmannii, not yet opened for the day when the photo was taken, although the camera registered a time just before two o’clock in the afternoon. Open flowers spread or bend back their tepals. Maybe the Afrikaans name for it, aandblommetjie (little evening flower) should have been heeded and a return visit paid later in the day.

Hesperantha flowers are subtended by two green, soft-textured bracts, the inner one smaller and notched at its tip. The flower stem zigzags between about evenly spaced, spiralling flowers. Here they all hanging to one side in secund fashion, as the stem is inclined and nodding. Flowers obey gravity like the rest of us (Manning, 2007; Leistner, (Ed.), 2000; Bond and Goldblatt, 1984; iNaturalist).