Gladiolus elliotii Baker

Plants 400-600 mm high, with glabrous cataphylls. Corm depressed-globose, 20-30 mm diam.; tunics firm-papery to leathery, fragmenting irregularly. Stem straight and erect, occasionally branched, slightly compressed. Leaves 5 or 6, lower 4 basal in a 2-ranked fan reaching to ± base of spike or occasionally somewhat longer, leathery, often puberulous, lanceolate or rarely almost linear, 14-20 mm wide, margins strongly thickened and hyaline, main vein not or barely distinguished from secondary veins, these also prominent but not hyaline, cauline leaves overlapping and uppermost inserted on middle of stem, largely sheathing and enclosing stem and sometimes base of spike. Spike straight and erect, 14-to 20(25)-flowered; bracts pale green and soft-textured, slightly inflated, outer (18-)25-37 mm long, slightly more than 2 internodes long, pleated in lower 1/2, dry toward apices and folded back, inner ± as long, lower margins fused around ovary. Flowers bluish grey to cream-coloured, minutely speckled with blue to red, more densely so along midline of upper tepals, lower lateral tepals yellow in lower half, unscented; perianth tube obliquely funnel-shaped, ± 16 mm long, lower cylindric part ± 8 mm long; tepals ovate-lanceolate, unequal, dorsal and upper laterals nearly equal, ± 28 x 17 mm, dorsal arching horizontally over stamens, lower laterals directed forward or curving outward toward apices, lower 3 tepals united for ± 2 mm, curving outward and downward from base, lower laterals ± 23 x 8.5 mm, lower median ± 25 x 11.5 mm. Filaments 11-12 mm long, exserted ± 4-5 mm from tube; anthers ± 12 mm long, mauve; pollen cream-coloured. Style dividing between base and middle of anthers, branches ± 6 mm long. Capsules oblong, 3-lobed and auriculate above, retuse, ± 25 mm long. Seeds oval to round, 6 x 5 mm long, broadly and evenly.