Bobartia fasciculata inflorescence

This Bobartia fasciculata inflorescence was photographed near Tulbagh. The flowers grow in a terminal head, densely clustered at the tip of a long, leafless stem.

The head is in the form of a rhipidium, which is a fan-shaped cyme with lateral branches developed alternately on the two sides. (A cyme is an inflorescence in which each flower is formed in turn at the tip of a growing axis, and further flowers are formed on branches below it). Still, a dense cluster!

The leaf-like spathes at the inflorescence base are brown, dry and chaffy, the inner one exceeding the outer. The individual flower bracts are membranous.

Bloomtime is late winter and spring (Leistner, (Ed.), 2000; Bond and Goldblatt, 1984; iNaturalist).