Gladiolus watermeyeri [Soetkalkoentjie]

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Rørslett, B . 2022. Gladiolus watermeyeri L. Bolus. Iridaceae. Soetkalkoentjie. South-African flowers photographed in ultraviolet (UV) and visible light. LINK

 

Soetkalkoentjie (Afrikaans) = Sweet Little Turkey

 

This is a small perennial geophyte, endemic to the Cape provinces of South Africa. It is a constituent of the highly diversified and colourful spring blooms on the dry plains of Nieuwoudtville, Bokkeveld, Northern Cape.

 

The distribution of this endemic species is limited (map from http://www.ville-ge.ch/musinfo/bd/cjb/africa/details.php?langue=an&id=21355),

 

 

The flowers are intriguingly patterned with stripes and colour patches, and the flower itself is highly zygomorphic. Foliage is narrow almost threadlike and not showing off to any degree.

 

The habit shows the brightly patterned flowers and the rolled-up, almost grass-like foliage,

 

 

Flower in  visible light,

 

 

Other patterns appear when the flower is photographed in ultraviolet (UV) light,

 

 

All images on this page are copyright Birna Rørslett and may not be used without explicit permission of the author.

 

 

[Published 9 February 2022, last update 10 February 2022]

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For this trip, I brought the Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 AP-Lanthar for documenting flowers in visible light. Camera is probably Nikon Df, or could be D800.

 

I have cut back on technicalities in the recent posts on South African flora, mainly because I need to work through the backlog as quickly as possible, All UV captures are D3200 either with UV-Nikkor 105/4 or Coastal 60/4 APO; this camera has the Baader-U built in. If required, I added SB-140 to natural light. This was often required as many of the species only had their flowers fully open in the morning and light levels then could be quite low.

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Some software likely has messed up the information, or mistaken the lens ID. My 125mm has a CPU reporting the correct EXIF data to the camera.

 

My database has stored the following EXIF read from the file (Norwegian labels, but you should easily identify the data)

 

Råfil:_DSC6388.NEF; kamera:NIKON Df; opptaksdato:2015:09:04 07:14:15; lukkertid:1/400 s; blender:f/4; program:M; lysmåling:CentreW; ISO:500; brennvidde:125 mm ; GPS:31 ° 22' 20.23" S,19 ° 4' 54.46" E ; høyde: 776 m.o.h.

[Andrea B.]

A very striking flower.

 

I'm happy to see your South-African flowers being posted, Birna. Great stuff!!