Aloes and Lilies of Ethiopia and Eritrea

Habitat and
distribution
Trachyandra saltii
Description
JODRELLIA TRACHYANDRA 125
The plants grow on rocky slopes with mixed woodland
of Acacia, Commiphora, and Delonix, around 900 m.
It is a near­endemic species, only known from the Bale
floristic region and the adjacent parts of Somalia and
Northern Kenya. The species has only been collected
in the fruiting stage from April to May, thus it probably
flowers sometimes in March to April.
4. TRACHYANDRA Kunth
The genus includes grass­like pubescent plants, growing
from a vertical rhizome with fleshy roots. There are
several inflorescences per plant. The flowers are open,
star­like, with subequal, one­nerved, white tepals. The
stamens are subequal, the filaments scabrid, but never
hairy. The capsules are subglobose, with few to many
seeds.
The genus is predominantly South African, with about
50 species, of which most are endemic in the winter
rainfall areas in south­western Cape. Only one species
reaches north of the equator and to Ethiopia and Yemen.
Trachyandra saltii (Baker) Oberm.
The species epithet refers to the collector, Salt, who
collected the plant somewhere in Ethiopia; precise
locality not known. It was described by Baker as a species
in the genus Anthericum in 1876, and transferred to
Trachyandra by Obermeyer in 1962. This species looks
superficially like an Anthe ricum, but it has the typical Aspho
delaceae traits in chemistry and seeds.
Short vertical rhizome with many fleshy roots and sometimes
with fibres from previous years leaves. Leaves, up to 35 × 0.4
cm, slightly olive-green, filiform to linear, gradually expanding to
broad sheathing membranaceous base, more or less pubescent with
long white hairs. Scapes (including the inflorescence) pubescent,
13–45 cm long, curved near the base. Raceme lax; bracts narrow,
cuspidate, up to 10 mm long; pedicels 8–15(–20) mm long, patent
or recurved, elongating somewhat in fruit. Tepals white, c. 10
mm long, with a brownish dorsal median band; stamens slightly
shorter than the tepals, anthers light yellow, ca. 1mm long. Capsule
subglobose, c. 5 mm in diameter, constricted at the base, with dull,
greyish, angled seeds.