Acidanthera: Flower Spotlight
This article comes from our series of flower spotlights, which are adaptations of the newsletters we send to members of our flower share throughout the season. You can see more spotlights by heading here.
Gladiolus murielae syn Acidanthera murielae, AKA Sword Lily, Acidanthera, Peacock Lily, & Abyssinian Gladiolus
The mesmerizing star-shaped beauty of acidanthera … for me, it was love at first sight.
This lovely late-summer delight gives me new life in the hot heat. Though it is a gladiolus, it's much different than the stately towering glads you might know; rather, it is delicate and wispy, bobbing its head above bright green foliage . The dark spot at the throat of the star-shaped flower provides fascinating contrast, and as older flowers fade, new ones open at the top of the stalk.
We plant these bulbs after the last frost, as close together as we can get them, for their slender stalks and small root systems don't need much room. They grow throughout summer and finally, in the last weeks of August, we begin to see blooms! After frost, we can lift and store the bulbs for next season.
The Latin word gladiolus means 'little sword' - referring to the shape of the leaves of this family. This plant is native to eastern Africa, from Ethiopia to Malawi. The epithet murielae honours Muriel Erskine, whose husband first described the flower with a binomial name after collecting it in western Ethiopia (or Abyssinia, as it was known then), the home of the Oromo people.
I hope you love their nodding contrasting flowers!
An Oromo woman from western Ethiopia. Source.