Description:

• Evergreen herbs, often growing in large tufts
• Rootstock a creeping or erect rhizome
• Leaves unifacial and linear or terete, then usually with narrow grooves alternating with veins, usually crowded together basally, tough and fibrotic, when unifacial without a distinct midrib
• Stem branched or consisting of 1 long internode terminating in fascicles of rhipidia crowded together, these subtended by a subterminal leaf, usually terete or elliptic in section in 2 species
• Inflorescences rhipidia, these occasionally single and terminal on branches or more often few to many crowded apically; spathes green and coriaceous or more or less dry, grey and chaffy, inner exceeding outer; floral bracts membranous
• Flowers actinomorphic, fugaceous, several per rhipidium, borne serially, pedicellate, pedicels pubescent to villous above; usually yellow, blue in 1 species, probably unscented and without nectar
• Tepals free or united below in a tube in 1 species, subequal, inner slightly smaller, not clawed
• Stamens: filaments free, erect, often contiguous below; anthers erect, twisting when dry
• Ovary ovoid to turbinate, sometimes tuberculate, usually exserted, occasionally included in spathes
• Style slender and short, dividing into 3 long filiform style arms, these apically stigmatic and extending between stamens
• Capsules woody, ovoid-truncate to turbinate, smooth or tuberculate
• Seeds angular, rugose, surface areolate
• x = 10

Classification Notes:

• The genus was traditionally placed among New World and Australasian genera (tribe Sisyrinchieae) with which it shares close floral similarity
• However, Bobartia is now regarded as a member of the Old World tribe Irideae and closely related to Dietes

Nomenclature:

• Bobartia L.
  • Linnaeus: 54 (1753)
  • Strid: 1 (1974)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 14, Western and Eastern Cape Provinces, mostly montane in rocky sandstone soils and often conspicuous after fires

Additional Notes:

• The flowers appear to be adapted for pollination by bees foraging for pollen