Geissorhiza ornithogaloides

Geissorhiza ornithogaloides is a small, cormous perennial reaching heights from 4 cm to 10 cm.

There are two or three long, linear, sickle-shaped leaves, growing from the globose corm covered in a brown tunic. The leaves appear directly from the ground and are from 1 mm to 2 mm wide.

One or two yellow, short-tubed flowers are borne on naked scapes, forked when there are two. The soft green bracts below the tepals are round-tipped. The corolla is about 1 cm in diameter, the six tepals in two whorls oblong and blunt tipped.

There are three stamens, nearly as tall as the perianth. The style is exserted from the corolla tube, dividing into three branches tipped by stigmas. Old flowers dry to a bluish colour.

Flowering happens late in winter until after midspring. The flowers open on warm sunny days.

The distribution is mainly in the Western Cape, while subsp. ornithogaloides, the more widespread one, is also found in the west of the Eastern Cape, as far as Humansdorp. The photo was taken at Minwater near Oudtshoorn.

The habitat is seasonally damp, clay, granitic and sandstone flats and lower fynbos and renosterveld slopes in the winter rainfall region. Neither subspecies is considered to be threatened in its habitat early in the twenty first century (Vlok and Schutte-Vlok, 2015; Manning, 2007; iNaturalist; https://www.pacificbulbsociety.org; http://redlist.sanbi.org).