Very rare, known from only a few small locations in South Africa. It's a beauty, but not easy to grow. Here in San Jose, California, it took about eight years to get one of these corms to go from seed to flowering plant. I had just one flower in 2022, and then two flowers (from the same plant) in 2024. I saved the pollen very carefully and parceled it out minutely, like gold dust, in dozens of crosses. A number of those appear to have taken, and I am looking forward to doing more breeding with this plant in the future. Hopefully the hybrids will bloom in less than eight years.
If anyone else is growing these and wants to exchange pollen, please contact me. It does not reproduce by offsets, so we should try to increase the population through seeds.
One of the distinctive things about this species is that the six tepals are almost all the same size. Usually the Peacock-type Moraeas have much smaller inner tepals.
A note to anyone who gets a chance to grow these plants: In the two years that these bloomed for me, during the previous summer I burned a small pile of twigs and dry grass over the ground where the dormant corms were planted. In the wild the species supposedly blooms best after a fire, and maybe that applies in cultivation as well.
In the photos below, the flower looks red, but in person it's more of an intense, almost fluorescent orange (the fourth photo comes closest).
This photo is pretty close to the right color balance:
Breath-taking! Fantastic to see these pictures of the species. Are you seeing this as a new genetic route to red moraea?
ReplyDeleteI hope so, Paul! I think it could add a ton of genetic diversity -- not just the color, but also the chevron shape of the eyes, and the wide inner tepals. But first I just need to get it to bloom consistently. It didn't bloom in 2023, so I am nervous.
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