Moraea bellendenii is a species

Species

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...

 of plant in genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 Moraea

Moraea

Moraea is a genus of plants in the family Iridaceae. The genus name is a tribute to the English botanist Robert Moore.The technical botanical material in this entry is abstracted largely from “The Genera of Southern African Flowering Plants”-Description:...

that was named after John Bellenden

John Bellenden

John Bellenden or Ballantyne of Moray was a Scottish writer of the 16th century.He was born towards the close of the 15th century, and educated at St. Andrews and Paris. At the request of James V he translated Hector Boece's Historia Gentis Scotorum...

, the English botanist.

It is common in the Western Cape on sandy slopes and flats, this yellow flowered 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 ....

ous geophyte is usually 50 - 100 cm high, multi-branched, with a solitary leaf. The outer tepal

Tepal

Tepals are elements of the perianth, or outer part of a flower, which include the petals or sepals. The term tepal is more often applied specifically when all segments of the perianth are of similar shape and color, or undifferentiated, which is called perigone...

s of the flowers are 22 – 33 mm long and the inner tepals tricuspidate, 8 – 10 mm long. It flowers from October to November.

Its distribution ranges in the Western Cape from Darling

Darling, Western Cape

Darling is a small town in a farming area on the west coast region of the Western Cape, about 75 km from Cape Town.By the beginning of the 18th century about 29 farmers lived in an area called Groenkloof and on one of these farms, Langfontein, Darling was founded in 1853...

 in the west to Plettenberg Bay

Plettenberg Bay

Plettenberg Bay, nicknamed Plet or Plett, is the primary town of the Bitou Local Municipality in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. As of the census of 2001, there were 29149 population...

 in the East. It is closely related to Moraea tricuspidata.

It was first described as Vieusseuxia bellendenii by Robert Sweet

Robert Sweet (botanist)

Robert Sweet was an English botanist, horticulturist and ornithologist.Born at Cockington near Torquay, Devonshire, England in 1783, Sweet worked as a gardener from the age of sixteen, and became foreman or partner in a series of nurseries. He was associated with nurseries at Stockwell, Fulham...

 in 1826. In 1929 N. E. Brown revised the assessment of the species and authored it as "Morea Bellendeni" (now Moraea bellendenii).