The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Babiana rubrocyanea
Also called Wine Cup Baboon Root, Winecup Bobbejaantjie
Blue and red babiana is a small tuberous perennial from the Western Cape of South Africa, with purplish-blue, red-centred flowers that appear in late winter and spring. It is endangered in the wild, so grow it from nursery-raised stock rather than wild-collected corms.
Babiana rubrocyanea is a perennial geophyte of 5–15 cm (2.0–5.9 in) high, with entire, lance-shaped, hairy, pleated leaves and flowers that have a narrowly funnel-shaped tube at their base and six free tepal lobes at the top that form a wide cup that is purplish blue with a sharply defined carmine red centre. It can be found in a small area of the Western Cape province of South Africa. Flowers can be found from August to the middle of September. It is called blue-and-red babiana in English and rooibloubobbejaantjie in Afrikaans.
Rooibloubobbejaantjie can only be found on renosterveld in the coastal region of the Western Cape province of South Africa in the vicinity of Darling. Monkey beetles and the horsefly Philoliche atricornis have been seen to visit the flowers. It grows in Swartland Alluvium Renosterveld and Swartland Granite Renosterveld on shallow alluvial sand overlaying clay that is damp during the winter. Over 80% of the natural habitat of this species was lost due to agricultural development, leaving only a few small and isolated patches. The ongoing urban expansion around Darling is a further threat, as well as competition by invasive alien grass species and heavy grazing. Finally, these renosterveld fragments are seldomly burnt, which is a necessity to keep populations healthy. B. rubrocyanea is therefore considered an endangered species.
Baboon Root · 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
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Babiana rubrocyanea 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.
