Babianas

Babianas are deciduous, mostly winter-growing, spring-blooming, bulblike perennials native to southern Africa. Best massed in the garden, these are diminutive plants with an outsized floral effect. Growing naturally on well-drained silts and clays, granite-derived gravels, and rocky or sandy slopes and flats, they need sun, good drainage, fairly mild and moist winters, and a dry summer dormancy.

Babiana framesii is native to the mountains of the winter-rainfall northwestern Cape, South Africa.

Appearing in mid- to late fall or winter, usually with the first rains, babiana leaves are lance- to sword-shaped, linearly ribbed or corrugated, often softly or roughly hairy, and held upright in a loose or tight basal fan. Funnel- or cup-shaped flowers appear above or among the leaves, sometimes at ground level, and are blue, purple, pink, white, or occasionally pale yellow. Some are bi-colored and many have contrasting markings on some or all of the six petals and petal-like sepals. Flowers are distributed along upright or nearly horizontal spikes, like freesias or ixias, and otherwise resemble those of Triteleia or Brodiaea, which differ by their arrangement in loose umbels.

Of about 90 species of Babiana most are native to the winter-rainfall Western and Northern Cape provinces of South Africa and most of these occur in the mediterranean climate of the Cape Floristic Region. Two species are found naturally in summer-rainfall parts of northern South Africa and southern Namibia (B. hypogaea) and southern Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe (B. bainesii). Within the Cape Floristic Region, babianas are found both in low-nutrient, acidic soils of montane fynbos vegetation and in the relatively fertile, alkaline clays and silts of lowland renosterveld vegetation.

Babiana nervosa is often still marketed as B. stricta.

The plant most commonly available in the trade is Babiana nervosa, which is still often listed under its former name of B. stricta and usually is offered as corms or as seed in a mix of flower colors. B. nervosa is native to seasonally moist to wet clay or gravelly soils in renosterveld vegetation from Piketberg, 80 miles northeast of Cape Town, south to the Cape Peninsula and east to Swellendam. Plants are about 6-10 inches tall and bear lightly fragrant, purple, blue, white, or yellow spring flowers above the foliage. There are many cultivars and garden hybrids.

Babiana rubrocyanea tops out at about 6 inches tall and bears broadly cup-shaped, unscented, deep purplish blue flowers with starkly contrasting, bright purplish red centers in late winter and spring. This species has a restricted native distribution in the southwestern Cape 40-50 miles north of Cape Town, where it grows in moderately acidic granite-derived sands.

Partially open flowers of Babiana rubrocyanea have yet to reveal the bright red centers.

Babiana sambucina is native to rocky slopes and flats in dry fynbos and renosterveld vegetation, usually in sandstone-derived soils. Plants are 4-6 inches tall and bear intensely fragrant, blue flowers with white markings that serve as nectar guides. Some of the flowers are carried almost at ground level while others may be higher up among the leaves.  B. sambucina has a wide distribution ranging from the winter-rainfall mountains of the Northern Cape through the interior Western Cape to coastal Port Elizabeth (now Gqeberha) where the coastal oceanic climate of the Eastern Cape brings occasional summer rain.

White markings on blue flowers of Babiana sambucina serve as nectar guides.

Corms of a number of Babiana species are available from specialty nurseries, but like many other spring-blooming bulbs, they sell out well before fall planting season. Seed is often offered online and can be sown shallowly in fall in deep containers or raised beds, barely covered in a fast-draining soil mixture. Keep moist but not wet. Seeds should germinate within six weeks. Seed-grown plants can take two or even three years to produce flowers.