Streptocarpus bolusii is named after Harry Bolus (1834-1911), entrepreneur and botanist, after whom the oldest herbarium in Africa, the Bolus herbarium at the University of Cape Town is named. He made the first collections of this species in the Ngcobo vicinity (about 120 km from the Pondoland coast) in 1904, and it was named by C.B. Clarke (see botanical history). The species occurs in the southern KwaZulu Natal and northern Eastern Cape Provinces of South Africa in the intermittent forest patches found in the grasslands at an altitude of about 1300 m, in an area which gets occasional snow in winter.
Streptocarpus bolusii is a monocarpic, unifoliate species. The long narrow leaves (30 cm) have a distinct petiolode (leaf stem), are dark green above, and beetroot red below, with many small white flowers (20 mm corolla) sometimes pale violet in the mouth with two yellowish raised keels in the throat. It grows in moss on vertical rock faces on boulders and cliffs always in deep shade in forest patches.
