Description
This rare species has 50-90 cm tall stems with large flowers of pale salmon to pink and rarely scarlet with an infusion of orange. In contrast, the lower petals are pink-white in the centre with the white speckled in scarlet-orange shades. The region around can sometimes be a darker shade, as in our plants.
Reliably cold hardy, this can overwinter in the ground as long as it does not sit in stagnant wet conditions. In the wild it is a native of the highest regions of the Drakensberg Mountains of South Africa where it occurs at over 2,700 m near the ski resort of Tiffindell.
Hardy in the UK it likes deep planting in a fertile, well-drained soil in full sun and lack of disturbance. Very little known but extremely deserving of cultivation.
Offered in the past as Gladiolus saundersii, it was raised from Jim Archibald, 2002 seed ‘Eastern Cape, no further data.’ Our description remains the same, as it was based on the plants grown, but the identity has been re-examined and it is clearly Gladiolus oppositiflorus salmoneus which is the next JCA collection number “3.270.101; E. Cape, Pot River Pass'”
