Home
Summer-green perennial. Corm small; tunic very tough. Stems usually hairy. Leaves usually strongly plicate. Spike simple or branched, pubescent. Flowers rich blue, mauve, crimson, cream or white, subzygomorphic, each within 2 lanceolate, hairy spathe-valves; tube straight, cylindric at base, widening to funnel-shaped above. Stamens asymmetrical. Style-branches short, undivided, usually flattened towards tip. Capsule many-seeded. Spp. c. 60 from tropical and S. Africa, and 1 from Socotra. Adventive sp. 1.
Flowers often in shades of blue or purple (sometimes yellow, red, pink or whitish in South African species), actinomorphic, or zygomorphic with stamens unilateral and arcuate; tepals united in a short to long perianth tube, subequal or forming 2 lips, sometimes the upper tepal much enlarged and arching over the stamens (or reflexed and sheathing the filaments).
Leaves several, the lower 2–3 basal and entirely sheathing (cataphylls); foliage leaves usually plicate (or flat and sinuate or terete), usually pubescent or puberulent.
Inflorescence a spike; floral bracts green, or dry and brown at least apically, the inner shorter than the outer and forked, sometimes cleft to the base.
Ovary oblong-globose, sometimes villous, style exserted or included in the perianth tube; style branches short, somewhat expanded above.
Perennial herbs with globose corms, aerial parts dying back annually; corms with fibrous tunics.
Capsules oblong-ovoid, coriaceous, often showing the outline of the seeds.
Stem simple or branched, sometimes subterranean, often puberulent.
Seeds blackish or dark-brown, several per locule, globose.
