New species of Sparaxis and Ixia (Iridaceae : Ixioideae) from Western Cape, South Africa, and taxonomic notes on Ixia and Gladiolus

Sparaxis aurieulata is a new species of this western Cape and western Karoo genus. It resembles S. villosa (Burm.f.) Goldblatt in its flowers but is p robably allied to S. galeata (Jacq.) Ker Gawl. Sparaxis metelerkampiae, cur rently a subspecies of S. variegata Sweet is raised to species rank. We pro pose changes to the infrageneric classification of the southern African win ter rainfall genus Ixia, and describe a new species, I. aurea, It is relate d to I odorata Ker Gawl. but differs in the larger deep yellow or orange fl owers which are unscented. In Gladiolus, we propose the new name, G. saxati lis, for the Mpumalanga endemic, originally described as G. lithicola Goldb latt & J.C.Manning, a homonym for an Ethiopian species.