Commemorating the ‘discoverer’ of S. ionantha, Baron Walter von Saint Paul-Ilaire (1860–1910).
Stems short and with a basal rosette of leaves, or spreading and rooting at the nodes. Leaves opposite, generally succulent, more or less elliptic and with a layer of soft hair. Flowers solitary or in clusters opening a pair at a time and with linear bracts. Flower tube short, 2-lipped, the lips hairy below. Fertile stamens 2(3-5), infertile stamens mostly 3. Style eccentric. Fruit an ovoid to cylindrical capsule.
Grown mainly as pot plants in a wide range of variable cultivars of S. ionantha (there are over 2000).
Leaf cuttings and seeds.
Fertile stamens 2; the flower tube shorter than its lobes.
About 20 species from tropical E Africa.
Coombs (1981).
Source: (2002). Gesneriaceae. In: . Horticultural Flora of South-eastern Australia. Volume 4. Flowering plants. Dicotyledons. Part 3. The identification of garden and cultivated plants. University of New South Wales Press.