Gladiolus Tourn. ex L.

Overview

Gladiolus belongs to the iris family, Iridaceae; Kew gives its native range as Europe to Iran, Arabia and Africa. Flora of Somalia gives some 285 species centred in southern Africa and extending through tropical Africa and Madagascar to Europe and the Middle East; Flora of Oman gives about 180 species in Africa, concentrated in the south-western Cape.

The plate above is G. cardinalis from Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, plate 135 (1790); WCVP cites this plate as the place the species was published and records it as native to the Cape Provinces.

Classification and characters

Linnaeus published the genus in Species Plantarum in 1753; Acidanthera, Antholyza, Homoglossum and other genera are now included (see below). Flora of Tropical East Africa describes perennials with corms in leathery to fibrous, netted tunics; flowers in a spike, all facing one way (in two ranks in a few species); and flowers bilaterally symmetrical, radially symmetrical in a few South African species.

Distribution

WCVP records the genus as native to 101 TDWG botanical regions and introduced in 27 more.

Introduced

AlabamaArgentina NortheastArkansasCaliforniaEast HimalayaFinlandFloridaGeorgiaGreat BritainHawaiiIrelandJamaicaKentuckyLouisianaMadeiraMexico CentralMississippiNew Zealand NorthNorth CarolinaOklahomaPeruPuerto RicoSouth CarolinaTasmaniaTennesseeTexasWestern Australia

Accepted species

WCVP accepts 305 species; names with × are natural hybrids. The count changes with revisions; checked 2026-10-24.

Historic plates

Plates in date order; the printed names are kept as they appear, current names are on the species pages and the topic page.

• 

  Gladiolus cardinalis

  Curtis's Botanical Magazine · 135 · 1790
  Sydenham Edwards
• 

  Gladiolus watsonius

  Curtis's Botanical Magazine · 450 · 1799
  Sydenham Edwards
• 

  Gladiolus imbricatus

  Deutschlands Flora in Abbildungen · 1830
  Fieber
• 

  Gladiolus ringens

  Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe · 1848
  L. Stroobant, Louis van Houtte
• 

  Gladiolus gandavensis

  Favourite Flowers of Garden and Greenhouse · Pl. 258 · 1897
  

Growing and cut-flower handling

The RHS notes that some species and cultivars are hardy and others need frost protection; many popular garden hybrids are not fully hardy and are usually lifted and stored frost-free, summer-flowering hybrids about six weeks after flowering, before the foliage fades. Garden hybrids make good cut flowers and can be planted in rows; when cutting, leave as much foliage as possible to feed next year’s corm.

Floralife advises choosing spikes with a few open florets and one to five stems showing colour, avoiding brown or shrivelled florets and leaf-tip burn; store at 1–3 °C and 75–85% relative humidity; vase life is 6–10 days. Store upright if possible, as spikes bend and deform. Ethylene sensitivity is low, but ethylene makes unopened florets abort, so ask whether the stems were treated with an ethylene action inhibitor. Gladioli are fluoride-sensitive, so avoid fluoridated and softened water; stem ends readily form bacterial biofilm; and the leaves yellow easily, which a bulb flower food helps. The ASPCA lists gladiolus as toxic to dogs, cats and horses, with the highest concentration in the corms.

Further reading

• Flower guide
• Reference library

References

1. WCVP · World Checklist of Vascular Plants (via ChecklistBank dataset 2232) · accessed 2026-10-24
2. Kew (POWO data on the ColPlanta site) · Gladiolus, with genus descriptions from Flora of Tropical East Africa, Flora of Oman and Flora of Somalia
3. RHS · How to grow gladioli
4. Floralife · Gladiolus care and handling
5. ASPCA Animal Poison Control · Gladiola