[pbs] Dietes - basics
Mary Sue Ittner
msittner at mcn.org
Mon Jul 13 10:44:49 EDT 2009
Dear Jim,
I smiled when you asked it our wiki photos are accurate and correctly
named. I believe the wiki page to be correct as it has been carefully
researched by me as I wanted to be sure what those plants were that grow
all over the place in California and bloom for such a long time.
Interestingly these are summer rainfall plants and California is a winter
rainfall place which just shows you that common sense rules about what
shouldn't grow well sometimes needs to be tested.
Kew accepts these species:
Dietes bicolor (Steud.) Sweet ex Klatt, Linnaea 34: 584 (1866)
Dietes butcheriana Gerstner, J. S. African Bot. 9: 149 (1943),
Dietes flavida Oberm., Fl. Pl. Africa 38: t. 1488 (1967)
Dietes grandiflora N.E.Br., J. Linn. Soc., Bot. 48: 35 (1928)
Dietes iridioides (L.) Sweet, Hort. Brit., ed. 2: 497 (1830)
Dietes robinsoniana (F.Muell.) Klatt, Abh. Naturf. Ges. Halle 15: 374 (1882).
We have four of them pictured on the wiki. Those other two species are
pictured in the Pooley book, A Field Guide to WildFlowers Kwazulu-Natal and
the Eastern Region. Dietes vegeta is a synonym Kew says for D. iridioides.
On the other hand Kew also says that another synonym for Dietes vegeta is
Moraea vegeta which is an entirely different plant with absolutely no
resemblance to Dietes iridioides at all. Dietes are rhizomatous plants.
Moraea vegeta is a very short plant that grows from a corm.
The always excellent (with Rachel Saunders as editor) IBSA bulletin has an
article by Graham Duncan in the latest issue describing a new color form of
Dietes bicolor that he believes will be an excellent garden plant if
watered regularly. He describes Dietes bicolor and Dietes grandiflora as
being important landscape plants in South Africa, growing in sun or light
shade, in almost any soil, surviving harsh conditions like roadside
plantings and growing well in boggy situations and once established long
periods of drought. As for D. butcheriana and D. iridioides, he states
their small flowers are not as showy, but they will grow well in shade and
the latter can be used as a ground cover under trees as it grows rapidly.
D. butcheriana occurs in the mistbelt evergreen forest and has beautiful
fans of very broad, bright green leaves. Dietes flavida has light yellow
flowers and he describes it as an excellent choice for its leaves placed in
clumps towards the rear of sunny or semi-shaded borders. D. robinsoniana is
native to an island off Australia and he describes it as a handsome garden
plant for full sun. Some forms of Dietes iridioides can withstand sub-zero
temperatures for short periods, but this genus is considered a tender genus.
The new form of Dietes bicolor described in the article found growing near
the Mzamba River in the Eastern Cape has creamy inner and outer tepals with
the outer tepals each having a prominent, semi-circular dark brown or
almost black nectar guide near the base outlined with bright orange, with
small, bright orange dots on the tepal claw that curves downwards toward
the center of the flower. Comparing the picture in the bulletin with the
one on the wiki in your mind substitute the black in the wiki pictures for
orange.
Mary Sue
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