Ixia flexuosa L.

Horticultural & Botanical History

The plant figured at BM t.127/1790 as Ixia flexuosa is probably Ixia hybrida Ker-Gawl. which see.

‘[Ixia flexuosa] varies with white, white with red streaks, red and violet-coloured flowers, which are also frequently stained. […] Although Linnaeus has given it the specific name of flexuosa, yet in his description he says it is “a flore ad florem parum flexus.”  This now vague and inappropriate name most probably led Tunberg to suspect it to be a variety of his “secunda,” which is truly flexuose.  The plant described and figured as a variety of this by Mr. Curtis, No 127 of this work, has partly its habit and partly that of Ixia conica, and is so equally claimed by both, that we have named it “hybrida;” it has the flat hypocrateriform stained base of conica, and the polystachious stem, white corolla, and fragrance of this, but does not expand so freely as it, nor fo shyly as conica, and the leaves are rather more glaucous than in either of these.  Cultivated by Miller in 1757.  Propagates freely.

In bulb Ixia flexuosa, hybrida, patens, and conica, agree together, but differ from Ixia erecta and maculata.  All our varieties were drawn in April at Messrs. Grimwood and Wykes’s.’  [BM t.624/1803].  

History at Camden Park

Plants of this name were presented to the Sydney Botanic Garden in 1831 [RBGS AB1].  This is the only reference and this plant may be synonymous with Ixia hybrida Ker-Gawl. which see.

Notes

For further discussion of Ixias see Ixia hybrid ‘Calypso’.