Plant in full sun in a well-drained soil and irrigate regularly. Hardy and evergreen to around 23° F and returns from its corms if frozen down - is cold hardy enough to be grown in USDA Zone 7a or 6 with mulch. An attractive vertical element plant for the irrigated perennial bed or meadow with beautiful flowers that have a delightful fragrance.

Moraea huttonii occurs naturally from the summer rainfall Amatola Mountains in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa north along the Drakensberg Mountains in KwaZulu-Natal and into southern Mpumalanga. The species was first published as Dietes huttonii by the British botanist John Gilbert Baker in Curtis's Botanical Magazine in 1875 but reclassified as Moraea huttonii by the South African botanist Anna Amelia Obermeyer, who specialized in petaloid monocots. This new name was published in Flowering Plants of Africa Volume 42 in 1970. The genus name is a tribute to the English botanist and politician Robert More and the specific epithet honors a Mr. Hutton, who sent the first specimen from the eastern province of the Cape Colony to John Baker at the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew that Baker used to describe the species.

Our thanks go out to the meadow master and grassman John Greenlee for first providing us the seed of this wonderful plant. 

The information about Moraea huttonii that is displayed on this web page is based on research conducted in our nursery's horticultural library and from reliable online resources. We will also include observations made about this plant as it grows in our nursery gardens and other gardens that we have visited, as well how the crops have performed in containers in our nursery field. We also incorporate comments that we receive from others and welcome hearing from anyone with additional information, particularly if they share cultural information that aids others growing this plant.