Striking 'Lemon Flame' Veltheimia For Spring Colour

Striking 'Lemon Flame' Veltheimia For Spring Colour

The ‘Lemon Flame’ veltheimia is a natural colour variant of the commonly grown dusky pink or rose-pink forest lily, Veltheimia bracteata. The pink forms are native to the southern and south-eastern parts of the Eastern Cape, from the Baviaanskloof Mountains to Mazeppa Bay on the Wild Coast, and the ‘Lemon Flame’ colour form with its greenish yellow flowers is only known from the Bushman’s River Mouth and from near Port Elizabeth. V. bracteata grows from a bulb and occurs on coastal dunes between low bushes or on inland rocky slopes and cliff-faces. Veltheimias are members of the hyacinth family (Hyacinthaceae) and there is one other species, the exclusively winter-growing, summer-dormant V. capensis, which is widely distributed from Ladismith in the Little Karoo to south-western Namibia.