Ixia in Spring

The Ixia species gives so much color right through the winter period, then into spring and finishes off in summer with some of the most amazing flower arrangements, colors and color schemes that you couldn't even imagine.

Nature has a wonderful way of combining colors and schemes and we are fortunate to be able to grow these in our gardens.

I my last article, I made the comment that because I had been ill, I was not able to give attention to a lot of my species. Yet they survived. Mother Nature has given them the ability to survive under stressful conditions to a degree. When we take a look at the environment that these South African species have to put up with in the wild, you would marvel at their survival skills - lack of water, lack to fertiliser and many other features in their own natural environment, yet we manage to kill many of these species in our gardens by molly-codling them, when we don't have to. Many gardeners tend to over-fertilise and this does no good for the plant.

Two spring flowering species

Two spring flowering species that are flowering for me now are - Ixia vanzijliae and Ixia scillaris- and these have survived my wet Gippsland climate to give me a wonderful display, along with many others.

Ixia vanzijliae L.Bolus in Annals of the Bolus Herbarium 4: 114 (1927); G.J.Lewis: 134 (1962).

Type: Cape Province, without precise locality, Van Zijl BOL]8537 (BOL, holo.!).

Corm fibres fine, reticulate, or coarse and vertical in lower half. Stem 180-400 mm long, simple or with 1 or 2 short erect branches.

Leaves 4 or 5, lanceolate, spirally twisted with undulate margins, the 3 basal ones 40-160 x 4-12 mm, upper ones up to 250 mm.

Spike short, closely 2-7-flowered; bracts with upper-half or sometimes altogether closely flecked with minute brown lines, 9-13 mm long, outer acute or 3-dentate, with apex soon becoming torn, veined.

Flowers rusty red to deep salmon-pink, with a small violet-blue circular centre; perianth tube 8-11 mm long; segments obovate-oblong, concave, 13-20 x 8-11 mm.

Filaments 3-4 mm long; anthers 6-7 mm long. Style dividing above base to middle of anthers, branches 3 mm long.

Found in the broken karoo veld near Borinievale in the Little Karoo and between Robertson and Worcester.

[vanzj1.jpg] Flowering August to September.

Distinguished from all other species of section Ixia by its leaves with undulate margins.

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