The species is named in honour of the Edwardian artist, Marianne Mason and her brother Edward Mason, of St Bede's College in Umtata, who collected the species in 1911. Plants were cultivated at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden the following year from corms brought to Britain by Marianne Mason. This original introduction did not thrive, however, and the species appears to have first been used for hybridization only in the latter half of the twentieth century. Until then the cultivated montbretias (an earlier name for Crocosmia ) were derived from complex hybrids between three other species, C. aurea, C. pottsii and C. paniculata.

The genus Crocosmia, comprising eight species, is concentrated in eastern South Africa, where six of the species occur, with another endemic to Madagascar. The genus is largely found in temperate and subtropical climates, with just C. aurea extending into tropical Africa. Curiously, one species, C. fucata, is restricted to a single mountain massif in winter rainfall Namaqualand, far to the west.

Of the species, only C. aurea is cultivated to any extent, and the hybrid between it and C. paniculata, known as C. ×croscosmiiflora, is widely naturalized throughout the warmer, humid tropical and subtropical parts of the world. It has even achieved the status of a weed in some places. Several other hybrids with C. paniculata are popular in British gardens, some involving C. masoniorum.