In search of the lost cornflowers

In 2020, Alouise and Keir Lynch, from Bionerds, an ecological consultancy based in Robertson, Western Cape, searched and found a 'lost' population of a critically endangered bulb, endemic to the Little Karoo, the Ixia leipoldtii

- Mike Burgess

In 2019, while visiting her parents in the Klein Karoo, Alouise Lynch discovered a scribbled note in a botanical book concerning Ixia leipoldtii, also known as the cornflower.

In spite of it being the first time that Alouise and Keir had heard about I. leipoldtii, which has a flower with milky white petals and mauve and a pink centre, they were determined to locate the plant, last seen in the mid-1990s.

“The challenge was on,’’ recalls Alouise. “We had to find it!’’

INITIAL DISCOVERIES

I. leipoldtii, a member of the iris family, was first discovered in 1935 on the farm Eikekraal in the Prince Albert district of the Klein Karoo by Louis Leipoldt, a famous Afrikaans poet.

In 1954, GJ Lewis described