Description
(syn. parviflora)
(Roundtooth Ookow)
A readily grown but little seen member of an under-rated genus, giving its best in a pot under frost-free cultivation, but fine outside in a well drained loam soil. This makes good sized, blue-violet flower balls in midsummer.
Being botanical for a moment, this is sometimes recorded as being like Dichelostemma pulchellum. In fact the two are so very different that they should never be confused.
In multiflorum the tube is markedly constricted, so that part of it looks like an ovary behind the flower. The colour is always a paler, softer shade of violet with less blue and with far narrower petals, 2-3 mm at their widest and all six are similar in size and appearance.
There are only three fertile anthers, the other three are white and sterile, rolled around themselves like tubes. This flowers in a heavy ball with many more flowers in each than in pulchellum, typically with 30-40 flowers per umbel, (6-15 in pulchellum).
The flowers of this species look much more like those of volubile (whereas pulchellum looks much more like a Tritelia and would fit there by virtue of its 6 fertile anthers).
