Gladiolus watermeyeri flowers

Outside the flower, the large floral bracts of Gladiolus watermeyeri are bright green to dull green, translucent along their veins. The outer bract, up to 4,5 cm long, is acutely pointed, the inner slightly shorter with forked tip.

Inside the flower, the three stamens cohere, arching more strongly than the hood formed by the dorsal sepal above them. The hoods in picture are distinctly lined on the outer surfaces, not everywhere quite to the margins. The white, oblong anthers, have black lines along their sides.

The style droops over the stamens, well longer than them. The three white style branches, sometimes 8 mm long, don’t curve much in picture.

The lower three tepals hang together below, deep gold-yellow to olive-green, their tips white, faintly striped and pointed.

Pretty as these flowers may be here, they are inconspicuous in the veld, often hard to see but well liked by bees that have no problem finding them. Exceptional scent may exceed looks as a reproductive floral feature of the low-growing G. watermeyeri (Manning, 2007; Goldblatt and Manning, 1998; iNaturalist).