''Barberetta'' is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

of herbaceous

perennial plant A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives more than two years. The term ('' per-'' + '' -ennial'', "through the years") is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. The term is also wide ...

s in the family

Haemodoraceae Haemodoraceae is a family of perennial herbaceous flowering plants with 14 genera and 102 known species. It is sometimes known as the "bloodwort family". Primarily a Southern Hemisphere family, they are found in South Africa, Australia and New ...

. It contains only one known species, ''Barberetta aurea''.

Description

''Barberetta aurea'' grows to up to high from a tuberous rootstock and develops about 3 leaves that are arranged like a fan, flattened sideways and so creating a left and right surface rather than an upper and lower surface. The leaves lack a leafstalk, are lance-shaped in outline, hairless, up to long and wide at midlength, narrowing gradually to the foot and the tip, and have five distinct vertical ribs and several finer ribs in between. The stem is weak, long, with some hairs towards the top, and carries its many flowers in a simple raceme, of long. The stalks of the individual flower are inclined upwards, the lower flower stalks are long. Wrapped around the foot of each flower stalk is a persistent lance-shaped bract of up to long. The star-symmetric perianth consists of six tepals of about long and wide, that are yolk yellow when fresh and bright orange when dry. The upper three tepals have an orange spot at their base. The stamens are approximately long. The two upper filaments ascend and slightly diverge, while the lower filament diverges strongly in the direction opposite to the style. The filaments are yellow and carry very short, orange, elliptic anthers. The ovary is green in colour and about in diameter and contains one ovule of approximately in diameter. The ovary is a yellow style of m long that is strongly bent sideways and carries an orange coloured stigma. The ovary develops into an initially yellow, later blackish half egg-shaped capsule of about across that contains a single orange finely papillous seed of around . The sap of this plant stains paper red. cited on ''Barberetta aurea'' has a base chromosome count of 15 (n=15). Small corms grow in the axils of the bracts that are responsible for vegetative reproduction.

Taxonomy

''Barberetta aurea'' was described in 1868 by

William Henry Harvey William Henry Harvey, FRS FLS (5 February 1811 – 15 May 1866) was an Irish botanist and phycologist who specialised in algae. Biography Harvey was born at Summerville near Limerick, Ireland, in 1811, the youngest of 11 children. His father ...

. The genus ''Barberetta'' is named in recognition of a Mrs. Barber who collected this plant for science. ''Aurea'' is a

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

word meaning "golden". Comparison of homologous DNA has increased the insight in the phylogenetic relationships between the genera in the Haemodoroideae subfamily. The following tree represents those insights.

Distribution, ecology and conservation

''Barberetta aurea'' is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found else ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

( Eastern Cape province and KwaZulu-Natal). Like in the species of the closely related genus '' Wachendorfia'', two types of individuals occur, plants with only flowers with the style curved to the left and plants with flowers with the style curved to the right, and these are both present within the same populations. This so-called floral

enantiomorphy Chirality is a property of asymmetry important in several branches of science. The word ''chirality'' is derived from the Greek (''kheir''), "hand", a familiar chiral object. An object or a system is ''chiral'' if it is distinguishable from i ...

is thought to be a mechanism to increase

outcrossing Out-crossing or out-breeding is the technique of crossing between different breeds. This is the practice of introducing distantly related genetic material into a breeding line, thereby increasing genetic diversity. Outcrossing can be a usefu ...

and so boost genetic diversity. The species grows in moist and shaded locations. ''Barberetta aurea'' is considered a

least-concern species A least-concern species is a species that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as evaluated as not being a focus of species conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wild. T ...

References

{{Taxonbar, from1=Q8242448, from2=Q15357034 Endemic flora of South Africa Haemodoraceae Monotypic Commelinales genera