Ferraria glutinosa (Baker) Rendle

glutinosa: like glue in texture; sticky, glutinous; referring to the sticky upper parts of the branches.

Perennial herb up to c. 70 cm high with an annual stem growing from a depressed-globose corm 10-40 mm in diameter. Leaves several, about half as long as the stem, 4-8 mm wide, linear, often still short or not developed at flowering time. Stem laxly and repeatedly branched, densely brown sticky below the nodes. Flowers in solitary, 2-6-flowered rhipidia per branch. Tepals 25-35 mm long lanceolate, brown, maroon or purple, more or less heavily spotted with yellow, sometimes colouring reversed with a yellowish base and darker spotting; margins crisped. Filaments united in the basal part, forming a column, 8-10 mm long. Style diverging into 3 flattened branches, finely fringed at the apices.

Locally frequent

Angola, Botswana, DRC (Shaba), Namibia, Malawi, Zambia Zimbabwe and Northern Cape, South Africa