Aloes and Lilies of Ethiopia and Eritrea

Dipcadi viride
Description
Habitat and
distribution
Notes
Fig. 90. Dipcadi
viride, (left)
flowers with
long appendages
on the tepals,
form Shewa
floristic region;
(right) flowers
with short
appendages on
the tepals, from
Tanzania.
1. Dipcadi viride (L.) Moench
SCHIZOBASIS DIPCADI 187
The species epithet ‘viride’, meaning green, refers to
the colour of the flowers. It was described by Linnaeus
as early as 1762, by him referred to the genus Hyacinthus,
on the basis of material from the Cape in South
Africa. Moench transferred it to Dipcadi in 1802. The
appendages on the outer tepals are characteristic for this
heterogeneous species complex.
Plants 20–60 cm long. Leaves, 1–15, very variable in length and
width, up to 80 cm long and 2 cm broad, filiform, linear to broadly
lanceolate, smooth, margin sometimes undulate. Raceme with 5–40
flowers. Pedicels 2–8 mm, up to 11 mm in fruit. Bracts 6–17 mm.
Flowers yellowish green to brownish green. Tepals 8–13 mm, outer
with up to 30 mm long caudate appendages. Capsule 6–14 mm long,
6–15 mm in diameter. Seeds 4–7 mm long.
This species is found in grassland, bush land or woodland,
in sandy, stony, sometimes blackish soils, from 450 to
3200 m. It is widespread in Ethiopia and Eritrea. It has
otherwise a wide distribution in tropical and southern
Africa. The main flowering period in Ethiopia is from
February to June.
The species is heterogeneous and more detailed field
studies might justify more taxa on the subspecific – or
even – the specific level. The variation is particularly
pronounced in leaf width and tepal tail length, cf. the two
plants presented in the Figure, representing one shorttailed
and one long-tailed version. In fact, five species
were described from Ethiopia, here all are referred to D.
viride in the wide sense: D. tacazzeanum from Tigray,
D. minimum and D. rupicola from Gonder, D. erlangeri
from Bale, and the generic wrongly placed Albuca
hyacin thoides from Sidamo. With information from the