Description:

• Evergreen perennials, sometimes growing in clumps
• Rootstock a depressed-globose corm rooting from below, those of past seasons often not resorbed, basal in origin, tunics coarsely fibrous, often accumulating in a dense mass
• Stem aerial, terete, thin and wiry, usually with several branches, often drooping above, sometimes erect, subtending bracts dry and thread-like
• Leaves several, lower 2 or 3 cataphylls, these often dry and becoming fibrous; foliage leaves unifacial, often without a definite midrib in mature plants, plane, linear, coriaceous and fibrotic
• Inflorescence a spike, axes wiry, usually drooping, occasionally erect; bracts dry, usually papery and translucent, occasionally solid, becoming lacerate above and usually brown-streaked or flecked, sometimes caudate, inner bracts smaller than outer and forked apically
• Flowers actinomorphic and campanulate, usually nodding, often shades of pink to mauve, also red, purple, yellow or white, usually with small markings near tepal bases, unscented, with nectar from septal nectaries; perianth tube funnel-shaped, fairly short
• Tepals subequal, cupped and often enclosing stamens and often style
• Stamens symmetrically disposed and central; filaments arising in throat; anthers exserted from tube, sometimes barely so; pollen monosulcate, operculate, exine perforate
• Style exserted from tube, seldom from perianth, branches short, slender, slightly expanded above and recurved
• Capsules globose, cartilaginous
• Seeds globose or lightly angled, flattened at chalazal end, smooth, hard, often shiny, surface laevigate, raphal vascular trace excluded
• x = 10

Classification Notes:

• Dierama is recognised by the wiry, usually drooping spikes, pendent regular flowers and dry, either solid or scarious floral bracts, generally pale with brown streaks and veins
• The genus is closely allied to the southern Africa Ixia, restricted to the winter-rainfall region

Nomenclature:

• Dierama K.Koch
  • Koch: 10 (1855)~(Page number suspect - No access to the publication)
  • Hilliard, Burtt & Batten: 41 (1991)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 44, mostly in the summer-rainfall region in grassland, extending from Knysna (Western Cape, southern Africa) to Ethiopia
• Southern Africa: Centred in eastern southern Africa, and there both coastal and montane

Additional Notes:

• The flowers are pollinated by bees