Plant Name
Scientific Name: Crocosmia × crocosmiiflora
Synonym: Tritonia × crocosmiiflora
Common Names: Montbretia, Montebretia, Crocosmia, Autumn Gold
Plant Characteristics
Duration: Perennial
Growth Habit: Herb/Forb
Hawaii Native Status: Introduced. This naturalized ornamental garden plant is a horticultural cross between Crocosmia aurea and Crocosmia pottsii and thus has no original native range.
Flower Color: Orange
Height: Up to 40 inches (1 m) tall
Description: The flowers are on slender, arching, branched flower spikes. The individual flowers are 1 1/2 to 2 inches across (3.8 to 5 cm) and have 6 orange, spreading, lanceolate tepals (petals and petal-like sepals) and 2 small, reddish bracts at the base of the flowers. The flowers are followed by seed capsules containing brown, wrinkled, usually non-viable seeds. The leaves are green, grasslike, alternate, mostly basal, and narrowly lanceolate in shape. The plants are propagated from rhizomes, stolons, or by the rounded, bulb-like, 1 inch (2.5 cm) in diameter corms produced on the short, slender, scaly stolons. The plants are clumping.
Here in Hawaii, Montbretia grows along roadsides and forest edges in wet to mesic (moderately wet) areas at low to middle elevations. It does not grow in coastal areas.
Classification
Kingdom: Plantae – Plants
Subkingdom: Tracheobionta – Vascular plants
Superdivision: Spermatophyta – Seed plants
Division: Magnoliophyta – Flowering plants
Class: Liliopsida – Monocotyledons
Subclass: Liliidae
Order: Liliales
Family: Iridaceae – Iris family
Genus: Crocosmia Planch. – crocosmia
Species: Crocosmia × crocosmiiflora (V. Lemoine) N.E. Br. [aurea × pottsii] – montbretia
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