Diosma hirsuta red sepal lobes

Diosma hirsuta is called rooiboegoe (red buchu) for the occasional red parts on some plants. This includes plants bearing upper stem red leaves near the inflorescences, red on the fruit tips, red in the white flower cups, the occasional plant with reddish stems, and this form that has red, pointed sepals clutching the white corolla bases. They show this calyx colouring most conspicuously while budding.

Most of the photos of more than two thousand D. hirsuta plants shown in iNaturalist have no red parts, the rooiboegoe name elevating the unusual (Curtis-Scott, et al, 2020; Vlok and Schutte-Vlok, 2015; Manning, 2007; iNaturalist).