Description:

• Deciduous perennials
• Rootstock a corm, rarely reduced and rhizome-like, globose to ovoid or campanulate with a flat base, sometimes with a basal ridge from which roots emerge, basal in origin, tunics woody, or rarely firm-papery, concentric or imbricate and then notched below
• Stem aerial or subterranean, simple or branched, terete in section
• Leaves few to several, lower 2 or 3 cataphylls; foliage leaves unifacial, with a definite midrib, 2-several, blades plane to terete, sometimes margins and or midrib thickened, sometimes hairy
• Inflorescence a spike, flowers spirally arranged, rarely solitary; bracts green and soft-textured, inner smaller than outer and notched apically
• Flowers usually actinomorphic, rarely zygomorphic, rotate to hypocrateriform or nodding, variously coloured, mostly white or pink, also yellow or blue to violet or red, often fragrant and then usually in evening, with nectar produced from septal nectaries; perianth tube cylindric, short or long, sometimes curved near apex
• Tepals subequal, spreading, sometimes recurved
• Stamens symmetrically disposed or rarely unilateral and declinate; filaments arising shortly below mouth of tube, sometimes very short, erect or drooping; anthers erect and facing inward or articulated on filament apices and horizontal, sometimes drooping, occasionally included in tube; pollen monosulcate, operculate, perforate
• Style filiform, dividing at or below mouth of tube, branches filiform, long and spreading, erect when included in tube, stigmatic along their entire length
• Capsules membranous, globose to oblong or cylindric, sometimes dehiscing only in upper third
• Seeds globose to angular, flattened at chalazal end, sometimes lightly winged on angles, smooth or rugulose, matte, surface colliculate or areolate
• x = 13 (polyploidy)

Classification Notes:

• The presumed close relationship between Hesperantha and Geissorhiza has been discussed under Geissorhiza
• Hesperantha is specialised in its moderately long perianth tube, style dividing at the mouth of the tube, spreading filiform style branches and inwardly twisted anthers
• Although white to cream flowers that open in the late afternoon and evening are probably basic for the genus, and are most common in the winter-rainfall region, there are several day-blooming species in that region, and most of the species in the summer-rainfall area are also day-blooming, with pink flowers
• Hesperantha coccinea, long regarded as a separate genus, Schizostylis, has all the taxonomically critical features of Hesperantha, including a basic chromosome numder of x = 13, except for a rhizome-like rootstock, anomalous in Ixioideae
• The plant produces cormlets in the upper leaf axils of a shape typical for Hesperantha and it seems likely that the rhizome is a reversal from a corm, and associated with its wetland habitat
• Comparable reduction of the corm has occurred in a few species of Gladiolus and Geissorhiza

Nomenclature:

• Hesperantha Ker Gawl.
  • Ker Gawler: 224 (1804)
  • Goldblatt: 40 (1984)
  • Goldblatt: 134 (1986)
  • Goldblatt: 459 (1987)
  • Goldblatt: 59 (1993)
  • Hilliard & Burtt: 407 (1986)
  • Goldblatt & Manning: 262 (1996)
• Schizostylis Backh. & Harv.
  • Backhouse & Harvey: t. 5422 (1864)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 75, SW Western Cape to Ethiopia
• Southern Africa: Major centres of diversity in the southwestern Cape, the western Karoo and the Drakensberg (Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape, Lesotho)

Additional Notes:

• Although many species are pollinated primarily by small moths, pollination in Hesperantha has been little studied
• Even species with white flowers opening in the late afternoon are often pollinated by long-tongued bees during the day
• The long-tubed pink- or purple-flowered species in Namaqualand and the Drakensberg are pollinated by long-proboscid flies of the genera Prosoeca and Stenobasipteron