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Babiana ambigua
Also called Common Babiana, Common Bobbejaantjie, Neckless Bobbejaantjie
Babiana ambigua is a small South African geophyte from the Iris family that grows from a corm, producing fragrant blue to mauve flowers each year. It needs winter-wet, summer-dry conditions and sun, and is typically grown from corms in bulb gardens.
Babiana ambigua is a species of plant in the Iridaceae. It is endemic to the Western Cape province of South Africa. It is a geophyte, that appears from an underground corm every year and grows to a height of 5–8 cm (2.0–3.1 in) or occasionally up to 16 cm (6.3 in). Its leaves are pleated, hairy, lance-shaped, reaching higher than the inflorescence. The fragrant, mirror-symmetric, blue to mauve flowers, consist of six tepals merged into a tube at their base, but with free lobes at the top. The lower lateral tepals have whitish markings accentuated by a more intense blue line along their margin. Each flower is supported by two green bracts sometimes with a brownish tip, and the inner bract is divided entirely to its base. There are three anthers crowded to the dorsal side of the perianth and a style divided in three branches on top of a smooth ovary.
Babiana ambigua can be found in the mountains and the coastal belt of the Western Cape province of South Africa between Riversdale in the southeast and the Gifberg in the northwest. It grows in fynbos and renosterveld on different kinds of soils, including the deep coastal sands of the strandveld habitat, mountain slopes and flats with a rocky sandstone underground, and renosterveld vegetation on granite-derived soils. Urban development in low-lying coastal areas and alien invasives threatened some subpopulations. But this species is still too common and too widespread, and many subpopulations are present in safe mountain habitat, therefore it is considered a least-concern species.
Babiana angustifolia · Brandvlei Bobbejaantjie · Violet Scent Bobbejaantjie · Pakhuis Bobbejaantjie · Mini Rat Tail Bobbejaantjie · Nama Bobbejaantjie · Pink Bobejaantjie · Needleleaf Bobbejaantjie · Limestone Bobbejaantjie · Cederberg Bobbejaantjie · Cinnamon Bobbejaantjie · Sandveld Bobbejaantjie
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Babiana ambigua by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
