Strumaria karooica

Strumaria karooica

	A broad leaved species covered in long white hairs. I don't know what to expect but small white flowers seem likely. I got it from Julian Sutton at Desirable Plants. The label said: "Very small South African amaryllid. Small starry white flowers in early autumn. Winter growing - small pot in the greenhouse. Dry summer." Writing in the Bulletin of the Alpine Garden Society, George Elder says: "The appearance ofS. karooica in early to mid-September starts the main flowering season, which lasts through to November. S. karooica is a beautiful and unusual small species with umbels of upward-facing stellate flowers. In the form that I grow, the wide-spreading tepals are a glistening, almost irridescent white that becomes flushed with pink on ageing, streaked with pink on the reverse. The whole contrasts well with the wine-red maturing stamens. Other forms have slightly pinker forms that are more typical of the species. Unlike most other species, where the emerging leaves are visible at flowering, the entire inflorescence of S. karooica dries and dehisces a week or more before the leaves appear, which can be somewhat disconcerting."
25th November 2018

Graham Duncan says:

"The distribution of S. karooicais in the arid southern Great Karoo, from the southern Roggeveld and Komsberg escarpments in the Northern Cape, south to Matjiesfontein in the Western Cape, from 900 to 1200m (Snijman 1994) . It grows in small colonies on open flats in heavy clay soils among sparse low scrub. Flowering commences after late summer or early autumn rains, the leaves emerging a few weeks later when the plants are in fruit. The peduncle breaks off at its base at the late fruiting stage, dispersing the seeds as it is tumbled away by the wind. The leaves grow through the winter months and enter dormancy in spring, followed by a long, dry summer.
S. karooica has seldom been cultivated but should grow well in 15 - 20cm pots in a sandy or gritty medium such as equal parts coarse river sand, crushed stone chips and doleritic clay."


14th August 2020	20th August 2020	28th August 2020

References:

Duncan, Graham - Amaryllidaceae of Southern Africa , Umdaus Press 2016

Elder, George - 'Some autumn-flowering bulbs from the Cape', Bulletin of the Alpine Garden Society, Vol.86 , No.2 ,p.139 (2018).

Plants of the World online, https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/540689-1 , accessed 20.12.2025.