The Beautiful Monkey Shaped Flower

The beautiful Moraea Villosa is a species of peacock moraea, normally a group of plants named for the large conspicuous eye like eye-shaped patterns on the board outer petals of the flowers like found on the feathers of a peacock. There’re two subspecies recognized; M.V.Villosa has purple, pink, blue, or whitish petals, whereas the other M.V. Elandmontana is bright orange.

The pattern consists of a green to blue or close to black iridescent crescent, surrounding a cream to orange and eye is covered with long hairs. The complete shape is normally edged in dark violet. The delicate flowers grows from August to September, with only one flower at one time, and remain blooms for just mere two days, normally opening in the late morning, and open until the early afternoon of the following day.

The primary pollinator of Moraea villosa is commonly referred to as monkey beetles, due to their dark, hairy bodies and elongate or thickened hind legs. The attractive flower Moraea normally participated in great abduance in the mass spring flower display of the cape lowlands, although 80% of its habitat to wheat fields and urban expansion, only some population remains in isolated renosterveld fragments. Populations on these trivial fragments, which are surrounded by crop fields, are endangered by a lack of fire, loss of pollinators, pollution by pesticides and fertilizer, and invasion by alien plants, predominantly grasses, which find favorable habitat in the fertilizer-enriched soil.

Moraea Villosa is everlasting cormous geophyte, normally grows 40cm tall, and its stems are soft and hairy, and leafs are normally longer than stem. It is also classified as vulnerable, because of its minor population size, and only one population of about 350 plants is known.