Plant Profile
Chasmanthe Floribunda var. floribunda
Common names: Cobra Lily
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Bulb
Up to 1.5 m
Deciduous
Indigenous
Full Sun
Lots of water
Well Drained Soil
Wind Resistant
Some Frost
Chasmanthe foribunda is the largest and most floriferous of the three species in the genus (C. floribunda, C. aethiopica and C. bicolor), as reflected in the specific epithet floribundus, Latin for ‘producing many flowers’. All three species are endemic to the winter-rainfall region of South Africa.
Restricted to the coastal and near-inland parts of the winter-rainfall zone of South Africa, extending from coastal Namaqualand in the Northern Cape, south to the Cape Peninsula and east to Hermanus in the Western Cape, most commonly on rocky outcrops along the coast and along the coastal mountains, favouring sandstone and granite soils, but in dolerite outcrops near Nieuwoudtville.
The species requires cool temperate growing conditions with moderate watering in winter, and dry or well-drained soils during the summer dormant period.
Foliage
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Leaves sword-shaped, medium textured, with a prominent main vein, mostly 25–35 mm wide.
Flower
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Spike erect, with flowers in two ranks, mostly 30- to 40-flowered; bracts (9–)13–15 mm long, green flushed red on margins or entirely. Flowers bright to deep orange with lower half of tube paler or yellow, unscented; floral tube trumpet-shaped, slender and spirally twisted below.
NOTES
This species was illustrated as early as 1635 in a volume of woodcut illustrations by Jacques-Phillipe Cornut, Canadensium plantarum, under the polynomial Gladiolus aethiopicus flore coccineo (red-flowered gladiolus from Africa) but was confused with the smaller Chasmanthe aethiopica until the early years of the nineteenth century.
Available DNA evidence suggests that Chasmanthe is related to the genus Freesia but it is most likely to be confused with orange-flowered Crocosmia species.
