Gladiolus, pronounced "glad-ee-oh-les", is known to be Evanna’s birth flower. Deriving from the Latin word gladius, meaning sword, this beautiful flower is also called the sword lily. With hundreds of different species this one flower has, most of them can be found in South Africa. The species vary from small to giant flowers with spikes residing on one side. This particular flower grows from a rounded bulb underground called a corm. This allows the flower to survive extreme weather such as intense heat and prolonged droughts. They usually take a couple years to reach flowering size. These flowers are variously colored, pink to reddish or light purple with white, contrasting markings, or white to cream or orange to red.