Cape Belladonna
More Cape belladonna facts:
The scientific name was nearly assigned to a South American lily family, until a preserved sample of the plant was found in the British Museum, showing that the 'Cape Belladonna' had indeed been described by Carolus Linnaeus (a rather famous namer-of-organisms), so it became the "type" for the name.
Amaryllidaceae (the larger family Amaryllis belladonna belongs to) produce alkaloids (secondary metabolites), one of which has been used to treat Alzheimer's disease.
Some of the alkaloids in the Cape Belladonna are being explored as an anti-malarial.
In the Western Cape, they're called March lilies, because they normally bloom in March.
A bit of an odd garden plant, they go through phases of growing prolific foliage, then nothing, then flowering, then nothing again (no citation for this one, just personal observation). That's why they're called naked ladies – they flower without any foliage.
Sources:
Tallini, Luciana R., et al. "Alkaloid constituents of the Amaryllidaceae plant Amaryllis belladonna L." Molecules 22.9 (2017): 1437.
Dandy, James Edgar, and Francis Raymond Fosberg. "The type of Amaryllis belladonna L." Taxon 3 (1954): 231-232.
Cho, Namki, et al. "Antiplasmodial alkaloids from bulbs of Amaryllis belladonna Steud." Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters 28.1 (2018): 40-42.
Image: Pixabay – Chesna
