Aloes and Lilies of Ethiopia and Eritrea

234 IRIDACEAE
Dierama cupuliflorum
Description
4. DIERAMA K. Koch
The genus is easily recognised from the other indigenous
genera by the wiry, usually drooping spikes, and the
pendent, radially symmetric flowers.
The genus includes evergreen perennials with large
persistent corms with coarsely fibrous tunics. The leaves
are several; the lower cataphylls are 2–3, sheathing
the base, often dry and becoming fibrous; the foliage
leaves are linear, plane, fibrous, often without a midrib.
The stem is terete, slender and wiry, usually branched.
The inflorescence is a spike. The axes are wiry, usually
drooping, but sometimes erect. The bracts are scarious,
solid or sometimes membranous, if so then often
translucent, lacerate above and usually brown­streaked
or veined. The flowers are usually pink (also red, purple,
yellow or white), radially symmetric, usually pendent
and campanulate, with a fairly short funnel­shaped
tube. The tepals are subequal. The style is exserted
from tube, seldom from the perianth, and the branches
are simple, short and filiform. The capsules are globose
and coriaceous. The seeds are globose or slightly angled,
hard, smooth and often shiny.
The genus contains c. 44 species that extend from the
eastern Cape in South Africa through east tropical Africa
to Ethiopia. Most species are concentrated in southern
Africa. Only one species is known in Ethiopia.
Dierama cupuliflorum Klatt
The specific epithet ‘cupuliflorum’ refers to the cup
(cupula) shaped (­florum) flower.
The species was described by Klatt in 1879 from a
plant collected in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania by Decken and
Kersten.
Plant in clumps of few to many stems. Corms 10–20 (–25) mm in
diameter. Leaves several, basal 20–85 × 0.4–0.7(–1.1) cm. Stems
0.3–1–3.5 m long, 2–4­branched. Spikes pendulous, terminal
2–6(–7)-flowered, lateral spikes 2–4(–5)-flowered, flowers usually
laxly arranged. Flower 18–30 mm long; tepals 12–15 × 4.5–9 mm.
Anthers 5–7.5 mm long. Stigmas reaching to 3–6 mm below tepal
apices. Ovary ovoid, c. 4 mm long; style reaching to anther apices
or shortly beyond them, and 3–4 mm short of tepal apices. Capsules
globose, 6–8 mm long.