Watsonia

Accepted species 54 Documented here 33 Family Iridaceae

Accepted species 54 in this genus

Every accepted species in the genus is listed. A name links to its page when we hold at least three commercially licensed photographs of it. Where we do not, the row shows how many we actually found, which is usually none.

SpeciesAuthority Usable photographsPage
Watsonia tabularis J.W.Mathews & L.Bolus 529 documented
Watsonia meriana (L.) Mill. 271 documented
Watsonia borbonica (Pourr.) Goldblatt 239 documented
Watsonia pillansii L.Bolus 204 documented
Watsonia fourcadei J.W.Mathews & L.Bolus 147 documented
Watsonia coccinea (Herb. ex Baker) Baker 120 documented
Watsonia schlechteri L.Bolus 120 documented
Watsonia angusta Ker Gawl. 99 documented
Watsonia aletroides (Burm.f.) Ker Gawl. 81 documented
Watsonia densiflora Baker 81 documented
Watsonia laccata (Jacq.) Ker Gawl. 76 documented
Watsonia knysnana L.Bolus 67 documented
Watsonia watsonioides (Baker) Oberm. 63 documented
Watsonia stenosiphon L.Bolus 61 documented
Watsonia pulchra N.E.Br. ex Goldblatt 46 documented
Watsonia confusa Goldblatt 35 documented
Watsonia lepida N.E.Br. 32 documented
Watsonia marginata (L.f.) Ker Gawl. 30 documented
Watsonia vanderspuyae L.Bolus 28 documented
Watsonia strictiflora Ker Gawl. 22 documented
Watsonia humilis Mill. 15 documented
Watsonia gladioloides Schltr. 14 documented
Watsonia minima Goldblatt 13 documented
Watsonia paucifolia Goldblatt 10 documented
Watsonia spectabilis Schinz 10 documented
Watsonia zeyheri L.Bolus 7 documented
Watsonia stokoei L.Bolus 5 documented
Watsonia rogersii L.Bolus 4 documented
Watsonia wilmaniae J.W.Mathews & L.Bolus 4 documented
Watsonia canaliculata Goldblatt 3 documented
Watsonia galpinii L.Bolus 3 documented
Watsonia mtamvunae Goldblatt 3 documented
Watsonia transvaalensis Baker 3 documented
Watsonia bachmannii L.Bolus 7 below the evidence gate
Watsonia marlothii L.Bolus 4 below the evidence gate
Watsonia dubia Eckl. ex Klatt 2 below the evidence gate
Watsonia wilmsii L.Bolus 2 below the evidence gate
Watsonia hysterantha J.W.Mathews & L.Bolus 1 below the evidence gate
Watsonia versfeldii J.W.Mathews & L.Bolus 1 below the evidence gate
Watsonia amabilis Goldblatt 0 below the evidence gate
Watsonia amatolae Goldblatt 0 below the evidence gate
Watsonia bella N.E.Br. ex Goldblatt 0 below the evidence gate
Watsonia distans L.Bolus 0 below the evidence gate
Watsonia elsiae Goldblatt 0 below the evidence gate
Watsonia emiliae L.Bolus 0 below the evidence gate
Watsonia fergusoniae L.Bolus 0 below the evidence gate
Watsonia inclinata Goldblatt 0 below the evidence gate
Watsonia latifolia N.E.Br. ex Oberm. 0 below the evidence gate
Watsonia longifolia J.W.Mathews & L.Bolus 0 below the evidence gate
Watsonia occulta L.Bolus 0 below the evidence gate
Watsonia pondoensis Goldblatt 0 below the evidence gate
Watsonia rourkei Goldblatt 0 below the evidence gate
Watsonia strubeniae L.Bolus 0 below the evidence gate
Watsonia vicschuettei C.J.Potg. & I.M.Johnson 0 below the evidence gate

Why some species have no pagethe gate

This site is commercial, so it can only publish photographs licensed for commercial use. Roughly three quarters of the photographs on iNaturalist are CC BY-NC, which excludes them. A species needs at least three usable photographs before we will build it a page, because a page with one picture and no traits tells you nothing you could not get from a search result, and generating hundreds of thousands of those is precisely the practice that got the previous version of this site deleted.

So the species above without a link are not errors and they are not omissions. They are real, accepted plants that we cannot yet document to the standard we hold ourselves to, and the count in the photographs column is exactly how far short we fall.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. Accepted names, authorities, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. Photograph counts, restricted to CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA. Retrieved 2026-06-27.