Karomia speciosa (Hutch. & Corbishley) R. Fern.

speciosa: showy, good-looking

Deciduous shrub or small tree to 6 m. Branches usually unarmed but may bear spiny branchlets. Leaves opposite, broadly ovate to subtriangular, up to 5 × 4 cm (smaller than tettensis), softly hairy on both surfaces with minute sessile glands beneath; coarsely serrate-dentate to lobed. Flowers in 1-3-flowered axillary cymes. Calyx mauve or pale green suffused with purple, 11-20 mm in diameter; limb shallowly 5-lobed. Corolla blue, violet, purple to mauve, lilac or white; labellum of the lower lip 2-lobed, not laciniate. Anthers up to 4 cm long, densely covered in gland-tipped hairs near the base. Fruit c. 7 mm long, obconical, flat on the top with 4 horn-like appendages arranged in the shape of a cross the appendages without crests.

Mozambique (Maputo province), Swaziland and South Africa; cultivated in gardens elsewhere