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Babiana lobata
Babiana lobata is a small, hairless bulb-forming plant (12 to 25 cm tall) in the Iris family, native to the arid central mountains of the Richtersveld in South Africa. It is grown only rarely and is endangered in the wild, so it should be sourced from reputable nurseries or seed banks rather than collected.
Babiana lobata is a species of geophyte of 12–25 cm (4.7–9.8 in) high that is assigned to the family Iridaceae. It has leaves that consist of a sheath and a blade that are at a slight angle with each other. The leaf blades are narrow, sword- to lance-shaped and have a left and right surface, rather than an upper and lower surface. The leaf blades are slightly pleated and hairless. The inflorescence contains seven to twelve bluish mauve mirror-symmetrical flowers comprising six tepals, with the lower lateral tepals yellow sometimes flushed mauve at their tips, and with three stamens crowding under the dorsal tepal. Flowering occurs in July and August. The flowers emit a faint acrid-metallic scent. B. lobata grows in part of the Richtersveld in the Northern Cape province of South Africa.
Babiana lobata can only be found in the central mountains of the Richtersveld, where it grows on rocky flats and lower slopes including in the vegetation types Central Richtersveld Mountain Shrubland and Vyftienmyl se Berge Succulent Shrubland. It is considered an endangered species, because it occurs in a limited range of about 1,000 km2 (390 mi2), in only five known locations where degradation and ongoing habitat loss due to trampling and overgrazing, and the associated erosion results in a declining population.
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Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Babiana lobata 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.
