Home
Succulent glabrous perennials, rhizomatous and caespitose, much-branched suffrutices or solitary geophytes. Leaves in a basal rosette or distichous or cauline and alternate, fleshy and often terete or angled, with a tubular basal sheath, the outer leaves reduced, membranous and sheathing. Inflorescence a many-flowered raceme on a naked peduncle usually longer than the leaves; bracts membranous; pedicels usually long, not articulated; flowers yellow or rarely white, orange or pink. Perianth of 6 free tepals, spreading or reflexed, all 1-nerved, oblong. Stamens 6; filaments densely hairy in upper half. Ovary globose, with 2–4 ovules per locule. Capsule globose, occasionally inflated. Seeds angled, smooth or tuberculate, ovate, flattened and winged, black.
Stems branching or basal or 0.Leaves basal and rosulate or distichous, or spaced along the woody stems, erect spreading or prostrate, sheathing at the base and sometimes persisting as a sheath of fibres; lamina ± fleshy, subterete or angular or lanceolate, entire, glabrous or the margins occasionally ciliolate, often reduced or absent in outer leaves (squamae).
Perianth segments (tepals) free, usually yellow or greenish-yellow, brown or sometimes white (rarely pink or mauve), with a single dark central vein, the outer narrower than the inner, sometimes cucullate, spreading or ± reflexed for a short time then closing about the developing fruit, circumscissile below with a small annulus persisting below the ovary.
Inflorescence simple, overtopping the leaves, with flowers racemosely arranged on a peduncle (scape); peduncle terete, naked; racemes densely to laxly cylindrical or corymbiform; floral bracts membranous, ± auriculate or not, persistent; pedicels ascending, patent or ± recurved, persistent.
Seeds black or dark brown, angular or pyramidal with a convex outer face and 2–3 flat inner faces tapering to the point of attachment, sometimes narrowly winged on the angles, sometimes with a reticulate pattern of ridges on the faces inmature seeds.
Succulent geophytic herbs (rarely annual), caespitose (tufted) from a small woody rhizome or solitary from a tuberous or cormose rootstock, acaulescent or sometimes caulescent, glabrous or sparsely puberulent.
Stamens 6, erect, free, slightly shorter than the perianth segments; filaments densely bearded; anthers dorsifixed, versatile, introrse.
Ovary sessile, 3-locular, globose with 2–many ovules in each locule, axile; style terete; stigma capitate.
Capsule loculicidally 3-valved, globose or oblong-ovoid, sometimes inflated.
Roots numerous, fibrous or ± stoutly fleshy.
