Gladiolus woodii of another colour

Gladiolus woodii blooms as it is expected to when all goes well in the undulating mountain grassland of the Escarpment in Mpumalanga. Greyish blue, between lilac and mauve, or oyster-coloured are options of putting into words what viewers have learnt about naming these flower colours. But all the viewers did not attend the same school, or paid attention on the same days.

And if you don’t like the colour, G. woodii is very capable of presenting others. The other colours include maroon, reddish brown, pale lilac, pale yellow, pale blue, or oyster-coloured.

The tepals of each flower are not all of the same hue. What's more, the buds and old flowers shift their colours. And the lateral lower tepals normally tend to yellow, irrespective of the colour on the rest of the corolla. These two lesser tepals are also distinguished by dark central stripes (Goldblatt and Manning, 1998; Pooley, 1998; iNaturalist).