Babiana stricta or baboon flower comes from Cape Province

Cape Province

The Province of the Cape of Good Hope was a province in the Union of South Africa and subsequently the Republic of South Africa...

, South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

, and is among the best-known species of Babiana

Babiana

Babiana Ker Gawler is a genus of flowering plants in the Family Iridaceae composed of about 80 species. Most of these species are found in the southwestern Cape of Africa, with the remainder distributed in Namaqualand and Northern Cape Province...

, and the one used most often as an ornamental plant

Ornamental plant

Ornamental plants are plants that are grown for decorative purposes in gardens and landscape design projects, as house plants, for cut flowers and specimen display...

. It is included in the Iridaceae

Iridaceae

The Iris family or Iridaceae is a family of perennial, herbaceous and bulbous plants included in the monocot order Asparagales, taking its name from the genus Iris. Almost worldwide in distribution and one of the most important families in horticulture, it includes more than 2000 species...

 family, Crocoideae

Crocoideae

Crocoideae is one of the major subfamilies in the Iridaceae family.It contains plants which are wildly distributed in the Old world, mainly in Africa, but there are species like some members of the genera Romulea and Gladiolus which are native to Europe and Asia...

 subfamily. There are many hybrids and forms with different colored flowers, usually blue or pink with white additions. In mid to late spring, each flowering stem produces six or more blooms, each to 2 in. across. They are collected in an inflorescence

Inflorescence

An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Strictly, it is the part of the shoot of seed plants where flowers are formed and which is accordingly modified...

 and have a pleasant scent similar to lemon

Lemon

The lemon is both a small evergreen tree native to Asia, and the tree's ellipsoidal yellow fruit. The fruit is used for culinary and non-culinary purposes throughout the world – primarily for its juice, though the pulp and rind are also used, mainly in cooking and baking...

.

The seeds are black with hard coat collected in round seed capsule. The leaves have linear venation. The plant grows from a small corm

Corm

A corm is a short, vertical, swollen underground plant stem that serves as a storage organ used by some plants to survive winter or other adverse conditions such as summer drought and heat ....

. The whole plant

Plant

Plants are living organisms belonging to the kingdom Plantae. Precise definitions of the kingdom vary, but as the term is used here, plants include familiar organisms such as trees, flowers, herbs, bushes, grasses, vines, ferns, mosses, and green algae. The group is also called green plants or...

is around 12 to 15 centimeters high without the inflorescence.