BOWIEA VOLUBILIS

The tiny flowers are green. And the small fruit. And an larger one.

This small one has more true leaves than normal. William Henry Harvey, 1867 HYACINTHACEAE * Angola, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe Peat Medium Medium 25 Centimetres 5 Meters Green Seeds/Bulbs Sea Onion, Climbing Onion, Zulo Potato. Ophiobostryx volubilis, Skeels, 1911. Schizobasopsis volubilis, Macbride, 1918. Schizobasopsis volubilis, MacBride, 1918. Bowiea kilimandscharica Mildbraed, 1934. Aloe volubilis, Mottet??? "Bowiea nana". A member of the Hyacinthaceae family, first described by William Henry Harvey in 1867. Found in southern and eastern Africa, where it grows in a rich soil, and stands a lots of water and sun. The onion-like caudex can be op to 25 cm in diameter (could take 70 years), and the branches reaches for op to five meters, but will die back when dried out. It gets small greenish flowers, but can also be reproduced by dividing the bulbs. Highly poison, from root to top! Different from B. gariepensis by the curling main stem, green flowers and the capsule being valves acuminate.

The true leaves that emerge from the bulb are small, very short lived, but they are replaced by the scrambling or twining, branched green flowering stems which reach up to four m long which are scattered with starry, green flowers. Bowiea is named after the British plant collector James Bowie (1789-1869). The species name means 'turning, spinning, whirling, rolling, revolving' like the stems. *) Accordantly to the latest taxonomic system; APG IV 2016, Hyacinthaceae is now part of the Asparagaceae. Bowiea volubilis "kilimandscharica". Gottfried Wilhelm Johannes Mildbraed reconiced B. kilimandscharica in 1934, originating from Tanganyika, but although the fruits are longer, it is since been considered a variation of B. volubilis. A real nice bulb by Cok Grootscholten.