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Gladiolus
Also called Painted Ladies, Sword Lilies, Gladioluses
Gladioli are a genus of about 250 perennial cormous plants, mostly known through the tall hybrid cultivars grown for cut flowers. They are grown from corms planted in spring in well-drained, sunny beds.
Gladiolus (from Latin, the diminutive of gladius, a sword) is a genus of perennial cormous flowering plants in the iris family (Iridaceae).
It is sometimes called the 'sword lily', but is usually called by its generic name (plural gladioli).
Gladioli have been extensively hybridized and a wide range of ornamental flower colours are available from the many varieties. The main hybrid groups have been obtained by crossing between four or five species, followed by selection: 'Grandiflorus', 'Primulines' and 'Nanus'. They can make very good cut flowers for display.
The majority of the species in this genus are diploid with 30 chromosomes (2n=30) but the Grandiflora hybrids are tetraploid and possess 60 chromosomes (2n=4x=60). This is because the main parental species of these hybrids is Gladiolus dalenii which is also tetraploid and includes a wide range of varieties (like the Grandiflora hybrids).
The South African species were originally pollinated by long-tongued anthophorini bees, but some changes in the pollination system have occurred, allowing pollination by sunbirds, noctuid and hawk-moths, long-tongued flies and several others. In the temperate zones of Europe many of the hybrid large flowering sorts of gladiolus can be pollinated by small well-known wasps. Actually, they are not very good pollinators because of the large flowers of the plants and the small size of the wasps. Another insect in this zone which can try some of the nectar of the gladioli is the best-known European Hawk-moth Macroglossum stellatarum which usually pollinates many popular garden flowers like Petunia, Zinnia, Dianthus and others.
Gladiolus × byzantinus · Cornflag · Dragon's Head Lily · Italian gladiolus · Acidanthera
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Gladiolus 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.
