Summary[edit] Description: English: Tacca chantrieri in The Tropical Garden of Gardenia-Helsinki Suomi: Tacca chantrieri kasvaa Gardenia-Helsingin Trooppisessa puutarhassa. Date: 9 September 2009. Source: Own work. Author: Anneli Salo.
Summary[edit] Description: Tacca chantrieri is a beautiful and very exotic tropical plant oddly related to yams. The flower is dark purple to black and up to 10 inches across with long whisker like constructions that drape down from the flower sometimes as long as the plant is tall. The leaves are paddle shaped and pleated. It prefers shade and likes to stay moist but not soggy. Date: 14 February 2020, 10:50. Source: Bat Flower or Cat Whiskers (Tacca Chantrieri). Author: geoff mckay from Palmerston North, New Zealand.
Description: "Black Tacca" with its dark purple (almost black) flowers, bracts, petioles and bracteoles. Bracts of "Black Tacca"are irregularly shaped and partly folded, unlike the flatter bracts of T. leontopetaloides. Date: 1 January 2012, 06:02. Source: Black Tacca - inflorescence close-up Uploaded by Elitre. Author: Ton Rulkens from Mozambique.
Bracteoles are dark coloured and longer than in Tacca leontopetaloides. Leaves with a much shorter petiole and a smaller leaf diameter. My conclusion for now - an unnamed Tacca species, different from Tacca leontopetaloides. Mount Yokolo in Cabo Delgado Province.
Detail of the dark purple (almost black) flower parts of the unidentified Tacca species. This specimen was found on Mount Erati (Nampula province of Mozambique).
""Black Tacca" flowering in its natural habitat, rocky slopes on Mount Erati (Nampula province of Mozambique). Note the very short leaf petioles. Most of the 15-20 cm petiole is burried in the soil."
There is supposed to be only one Tacca species in Africa: Tacca leontopetaloides (besides the recently discovered T. ankaranensis from N. Madagascar), and the plant in the picture is clearly not Tacca leontopetaloides. A new one? Encountered in Cabo Delgado and Nampula provinces of Mozambique. Note the very short leaf petiole, and the blackish, long bracteoles. Here on Mount Yokolo in Ancuabe District.