Moraea

Moraea
Moraea viscaria
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
(unranked):	Angiosperms
(unranked):	Monocots
Order:	Asparagales
Family:	Iridaceae
Tribe:	Irideae
Genus:	Moraea Mill.
Type species
Moraea viscaria (L.f.) Ker Gawl.

Moraea is a genus of plants in the family Iridaceae. The genus name is a tribute to the English botanist Robert Moore.^[1] The technical botanical material in this entry is abstracted largely from “The Genera of Southern African Flowering Plants”^[2]

Description

Moraeas have iris-like flowers and were at first regarded as members of the genus Iris, but most of them are smaller than most irises and commonly they are more precise in shape and with a stiffer perianth and more definite markings. Some have strong, pleasant scents, while others have none to speak of. Plants of the genus now called Dietes once were considered to be in the genus Moraea, but were separated on the grounds that they were rhizomatous. In contrast, all Moraea species have corms.

Botanically, Moraea species are small to medium sized deciduous herbs. The rootstock is a globose corm covered with membranous or fibrous and reticulated tunics that may accumulate in multiple layers. The scape is subterranean or aerial, simple or branched, often bearing short leaf-like bracts at nodes. Leaves solitary or several, bifacial, flat to canaliculate or terete, with short equitant apex. Inflorescence a cymose corymb enclosed in large herbaceous spathes; floral bracts enclosed, membranous. Perianth Iris-like, radially symmetrical; tube absent except in one species; outer perianth-segments unguiculate, with limb spreading or reflexed; inner segments erect or spreading, entire, trifid, or reduced, or none. Stamens appressed to style column; filaments partly united, contiguous, rarely free; anthers linear, lying against style-branches. Ovary clavate to cylindrical; style usually short, 3-branched; branches, flattened, petaloid, each bearing forked crests; stigma a transverse lobe on abaxial surface at base of crests. Capsule globose to cylindrical, woody to soft-walled; seeds several to many, spherical to angled, or depressed and plate-like.

Diversity

There are about 200 known species of Moraea, divided into five groups, from various regions of sub-Saharan Africa. Most are endemic to Southern Africa, about 125 to the South-Western Cape in particular, with 2 species in Eurasia. They are typical fynbos geophytes and accordingly they vary greatly in their ecology, ranging from tiny plants just an inch or two high, to about four feet (120 cm), with a wide range of pollinators, including some long-tongued flies in families such as the Bombyliidae and Tabanidae. Some conserve their nectar and pollen for such pollinators by protecting their flowers from ants; they exude a sticky gum that covers the stalks of their inflorescences. Botanical names such as Moraea bituminosa and Moraea viscaria refer to this characteristic. The five groups are Galaxia, Hexaglottis, Homeria, Barnardiella and Gynandriris.

The corms of some species have been used as food, though they usually are small. Moraea fugax and Moraea edulis have been mentioned,the taste of the latter having been compared with that of chestnuts. However, some species are unpleasant and some actually poisonous.^[3][4]

Some Moraea species: ^[5]

Selected species

Moraea bellendenii

Moraea collina

Moraea flaccida

Moraea gawleri

Moraea macronyx

Moraea neglecta

Moraea ramosissima

Moraea tricuspidata

Moraea tricolor in Habitat

Moraea virgata

References

External links

• Media related to Moraea at Wikimedia Commons