Description :

• Deciduous perennials
• Rootstock a globose corm rooting from below, basal in origin, tunics of fine soft fibres or hard coarse fibres often thickened below into vertical claws
• Stem aerial, simple or branched at base or above ground, round in section
• Leaves several, lower 2 or 3 cataphylls; foliage leaves in a close distichous fan, unifacial, blades sword-shaped to lanceolate, firm and somewhat fleshy, with a definite midrib and many fine, closely set secondary veins
• Inflorescence a spike, flowers spirally arranged or secund; bracts scarious, often lacerate, pale with brown streaks, outer often tricuspidate, inner bicuspidate, smaller than outer
• Flowers zygomorphic and bilabiate or actinomorphic and campanulate, usually cream to yellow, often with purple shading, or purple, pink, orange or yellow, sometimes sweetly or unpleasantly scented, with nectar from septal nectaries or without nectar; perianth tube short to long, funnel-shaped, lower cylindrical part short or long, upper part sometimes bent
• Tepals subequal or unequal and dissimilar, dorsal sometimes hooded and lower united with upper laterals for some distance
• Stamens unilateral and erect or arcuate, or symmetrically disposed; filaments arising in throat; anthers straight or sometimes sigmoid or coiled; pollen monosulcate, operculate, exine perforate
• Style exserted, unilateral or straight and erect, branches undivided, filiform or expanded above
• Capsules barrel-shaped to oblong, cartilaginous
• Seeds globose, flattened at chalazal end, hard and smooth, shiny, surface laevigate, raphal vascular trace excluded
• x = 10

Classification Notes:

• The affinities of Sparaxis are uncertain: its unusual scarious bracts are like those of Dierama but differences in leaf anatomy and morphology, including the absence of submarginal sclerenchyma and the presence of thickened columnar marginal epidermis, make a relationship with Dierama seem unlikely
• Sparaxis may be most closely related to Tritonia with which the leaf anatomy, including margin structure and the presence of a midrib, coincide
• Chromosome number, 2n = 20, does not help in placing the genus: Dierama and Ixia also have 2n = 20 and Tritonia 22 and 20

Nomenclature:

• Sparaxis Ker Gawl.
  • Ker Gawler: t. 548 (1802)
  • Goldblatt: 230 (1969)
  • Goldblatt: 150 (1992)
  • Goldblatt: 151 (1999)
• Synnotia Sweet
  • Sweet: t. 150 (1826)
  • Lewis: 138 (1954)
• Streptanthera Sweet
  • Sweet: t. 209 (1827)
• Anactorion Raf.
  • Rafinesque: 34 (1836)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species 15, Western Cape and Northern Cape; mainly on clay soils in renosterveld, less often in coastal sandveld

Additional Notes:

• The short-tubed zygomorphic-flowered species are pollinated by bees and the long-tubed species by long-proboscid flies in the genus Prosoeca (Nemestrinidae)
• The actinomorphic, orange- and pink-flowered species with short tubes are pollinated by monkey beetles (Scarabaeidae) and short-tongued Tabanidae