Plants with hysteranthous leaves, solitary, foliage up to 100 mm high.
Tuber simple and unlobed, oblong, up to 55 mm long and 38 mm wide; skin light brown, interior pink to maroon red: growing point basal to lateral with a groove for the shoot.
Old leaf sheaths up to 70 mm long and 5 mm wide, spreading to 15 mm near ground level, membranous, greyish-brown.
Leaf solitary, sub-erect; contemporary leaf sheath exserted up to 40 mm, 3 mm diameter, pink tinged at the extreme base, white above, glabrous; lamina ovate-cordate, up to 10 mm long and 10 mm wide, glaucous, glabrous; margin revolute; adaxial surface producing a number of erect, stout, terete enations up to 50 mm long and 1-2 mm diameter, obtuse or slightly clavate, simple or branched, arising in a cluster from the base of the lamina, glaucous, glabrous.
Peduncular bract barely exserted, non-sheathing part about 3 mm long, green, apex retrorse.
Peduncle 25 mm long, wiry.
Raceme dense, spicate, up to 30 mm long and 13 mm wide, with up to 20 flowers.
Bracts triangular, somewhat saccate, up to 2 mm long, membranous, white with areddish-brown midnerve.
Pedicels 1.0-1.5 mm long.
Flowers small, globose to partly spreading in sunlight, up to 7 mm diameter.
Tepals dimorphic, connate at the base only, white with a green midnerve overlaid with red stippling especially on the outer tepals; outer tepals lanceolate, 5 mm long and 1.8 mm wide, inner spathulate with slightly irregular, denticulate apical margins, 4 mm long and 2.3 mm wide.
Filaments adnate to the base of the tepals, broadly lanceolate, 1.3 mm long, outer slightly broader than the inner, white; anthers yellow.
Ovary globose, 1.3 mm long and wide, pale green sometimes with pale purplish spotting.
Style cylindrical, 1.5 mm long, white.
Flowering time: February to March.
Leafing period: April to September.
Distribution and habitat: E.bowieanum is restricted to the Worcester/Robertson area where it grows on clayey soils amongst low karroid bushes (Figure 141).
Diagnostic features: E.bowieanum may be distinguished by the small glaucous green leaf with enations which are terete and glabrous. Another species with similar enations, E.armianum, has a separate distribution in Namaqualand. Although very similar in the leafing stage the two species are quite distinct in flower, E.bowieanum having a stunted peduncle and compact inflorescence only about 55 mm long in total, with small globose flowers, whereas in E.armianum the peduncle and inflorescence are 105 mm long and the largish flowers are triangular in outline and spreading (Figure 142)
Reference: Pauline L. Perry, A REVISION OF THE GENUS ERIOSPERMUM (Eriospermaceae)
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