Kumara plicatilis flower tips

The outer three segments of the drooping Kumara plicatilis flowers are here ending in pointed, orange-red tips that stay about straight where not pushed. The inner three are mostly hidden from view, making up for their disadvantage by visible yellow tips that curve out in the gaps between the outer tips. Usually scarlet, some orange-red flower variants do occur in K. plicatilis.

The dark anthers and the styles are usually exserted, as in one of the flowers in the photo. Interesting that the lower flower, expected to be the older one, (anthesis starting from the base of the raceme), has not yet exserted its parts requiring pollination before the upper one. The answer may be in the closeness of the two perianths on the stem, or possibly in the upper one facing more directly to the sunny side. Aloe related plants including Kumara often open flowers on the sunny side first. 

There is also an older flower, partly captured on the right in the picture at roughly the same level as the ones mentioned and already wrinkled, thus further down the road to fruiting. Some buds higher up still point outwards. The bracts here appear younger than the withered ones lower down. These papery sterile bracts scattered on the purple brown stem without flowers are matched by bracts subtending every pedicel base higher up in the raceme (Van Wyk and Smith, 2003; iNaturalist).