Moraea villosa Color Forms

One of the things I'm learning about Moraea bulbs is that they don't like to be crowded.  If there are too many bulbs in the pot, most of them stop blooming.  As a result, when you repot some overcrowded bulbs, you have to be very careful about giving away the small "offsets."  They might just be offsets, or they might be old overcrowded clones that you thought you lost years ago.

This is especially true of Moraea villosa, because its colors are so varied.  One summer I spent time repotting some overcrowded Moraea villosa: a couple of pots that friends gave to me, and several pots that I had raised.  I tediously transferred all of the (many) bulbs into separate pots, six or eight bulbs to a pot.  I probably ended up with a dozen pots or more, and I thought I was probably wasting my time.  I figured I would end up with a bunch of pots of the same thing.

I was wrong.  I ended up with a bunch of new (to me) M. villosa color forms.

In the years since then I've continued to find new color forms popping up in the villosa pots. I have so many distinct forms now that I've started to give them individual letters, so I can track them for breeding and bulb exchange use.  In case you get some of my bulbs or seed, here's what the letters mean.

(By the way, I should add that I have no way of knowing if all of these flowers are natural forms of M. villosa. Many of these individuals have been in cultivation for more than a decade, and have passed through the hands of several growers. It's very possible that a passing bee could have crossed one of more of them with other Moraea species. If that happened, all it'd take would be for a single seed to fall into the villosa pot, and all of a sudden you'd have a "new" color form. On the other hand, if you take a look at the diversity of natural M. villosa forms shown on the iNaturalist service, the ones I have here don't look out of place.)


Moraea villosa A.  This is what I think if as the classic Moraea villosa color scheme:  Violet tepals, a bright blue eye, and a hairy orange center. (The tepals look blue in the photo, but trust me, they're violet).

There's a variant on this one, which I call Moraea villosa A+.  Although the color scheme is the same, the tepals have more prominent veins, and the eye of the flower has a back ring around it.  It looks very distinctive when seen in person:

Moraea villosa B.  This one has slightly lighter tepals than form A, plus a lemon yellow center instead of orange. One thing I like about this flower is how wide the tepals are. They overlap, making the flower look like one unit. Compare that to form A above, which has gaps between the tepals. The offspring of form B tend to inherit these wide tepals.

I call this one villosa B+. It has a thin dark ring around the eye:

Moraea villosa C.  Light purple with a vivid teal/green eye and orange center, a very nice combination.  The purple in the tepals fades to almost-white after a few days.  All of my Moraeas in the past years had blue eyes, so I was very happy to see this one:

Moraea villosa D.  I think of this as a chocolate Moraea.  In bud, it looks solid brown.  When the flower opens, the tepals are the color of hot chocolate with a bit of whipped cream in it.  In a few days they fade to the color of face powder.  It is the strangest (and ugliest) form of Moraea villosa I've seen.

Here's the same flower a few days later, after the sun has faded it a bit.

Moraea villosa E is pale violet with a big blue-green eye (compare this to form C, which has a greener eye and much bigger orange ring around the eye).

In the right light, you can see that villosa form e has a green ring around the eye. Unfortunately, the same lighting that shows the ring also makes the tepals look white. They're actually pale purplw. (Also note the pollen-loaded honeybee visiting this flower. Bees are attracted to the blue-purple Moraeas. That's why I worry about accidental hybridization in my garden.)

Moraea villosa F.  This one is white.  Not pale purple or violet fading to ivory, just plain white.  The experts in South Africa tell me they haven't seed a white form of M. villosa in the wild, so some people speculate that maybe this is an accidental cross with M. aristata.  I can't rule that out, but the flowers do not show the other characteristics of M. aristata (for example, dots on the backs of the tepals).

I have two clones of this color form, from different sources (note the difference in tepal width).  I crossed them, and they set seed. I'm waiting for it to bloom.

Here's villosa F next to villosa B, for comparison:

Moraea villosa G.  This one looks a lot like form A, so I was not sure whether to give it a separate letter.  But the eye is indigo, almost black, instead of bright blue.  So I decided I should keep it separate:

Moraea villosa H. It's very hard to do this flower justice with a photograph. It's the most intensely colored of all my villosa forms, with dark purple tepals and vivid metallic green eyes. Unfortunately, any photo that captures the color of the tepals makes the eye look dull, while a photo that captures the color of the eye makes the tepals look washed out. So I'll give you four photos, and you'll have to average them in your head.

This plant came to me in a batch of mixed Moraeas labeled as a variety called 'Champagne Ice.' At the same time, I also received it from grower Bob Werra. So it's been around for a while. I have no idea what Champagne Ice is supposed to look like, and I doubt this is it. But who cares, it's a striking flower.

The photo below, courtesy of Garry Knipe, shows the intense color of the eyes. They look almost like something you'd see on a butterfly wing.

Moraea villosa I.  This one's similar to villosa e, but with a lemon yellow center.

Moraea villosa J. The basic color scheme is similar to villosa A, but with an intense orange rim around the eye.

Moraea villosa K. The tepals are pale pink, but unfortunately they fade to off-white after a day in the sun.

Moraea villosa L. The color scheme is a lot like villosa form a, but look at the intensely dark rim around the eye. It makes the eye look all the brighter.

Moraea villosa M. I like the faint purple ring around the eye. It'd be great if I could get that color stronger through breeding.

Moraea villosa N. These pictures look overexposed, but actually that's just the color of the flower. It has a mysterious light-colored eye that looks either greenish or bluish in photos, but is kind of gray in person. It's not necessarily the most beautiful color combination, but I think it's very interesting.

Moraea villosa O. Moraea villosa is a very diverse species, but this form takes the cake. The eye is a strip rather than a half-circle, the central cup is pale cream instead of orange or yellow, there's no outer ring of color around the eye, and there is a touch of magenta on the style crests, which are usually white.

This form was found by Chris and Gerhard Malan north of Piketberg, South Africa, at an altitude between 200 and 600m. They report that it grows in sandy soil mixed with gravel. Different individuals vary subtly in brightness of the colors.

There are three color variants here. Look closely at the tepal colors, style crests, and eye colors.

Photo by Garry Knipe:

Moraea villosa P. This one showed up in a pot of mixed villosas. It's similar to villosa d, but the color is lighter.

Moraea villosa Q. It looks a lot like form H, but the tepals are a little lighter, and there's a strong orangey ring around the eye.