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Flowers regular to slightly irregular, often white with red keel, sometimes pure white or pink, hypocrateriform or infundibuliform, with a long narrow cylindrical tube always longer than 6 cm. in East Africa. Filaments filiform. Ovary oblong, with many ovules per locule; integuments lacking; style long (up to 20 cm.), with undivided stigma. Fruit a large many-seeded capsule, with fleshy or membranous wall, indehiscent or bursting irregularly. Seeds globose, somewhat flattened or irregularly shaped, greenish or greyish, glabrous or occasionally papillose, often germinating in the fruit.. Bulbous plants with leaves in a basal rosette or rarely distichously arranged, never biflabellate, lacking a false stem (in East Africa). Leaves strap-shaped, lanceolate or linear, with or without a thickened midrib. Scape lateral, solid. Inflorescence with 1–25 large flowers, subtended by 2 free bracts
Herbs, perennial, scapose, from bulbs with elongate columnar apices. Leaves basal, thick; blade lorate or ensiform, not narrowed near base. Scape solid. Inflorescences umbellate, few-to many-flowered, subtended by 2 large, lanceolate, scarious bracts. Flowers sessile or pedicellate; perianth connate proximally, red to white, often striped, streaked, or overlaid with red abaxially, funnelform to salverform to semicampanulate, tube straight to curved, ca. same length as limb lobes; stamens inserted on perianth tube throat; filaments thin, often declinate; ovary inferior, globose; style slender; stigma capitate. Fruits capsular, globose or subglobose, usually prominently beaked. Seeds fleshy, testa often corky.
Herbs perennial, bulbiferous. Leaves basal, ligulate or ensiform, often large, with extensible fibers visible when torn. Flowering stem solid. Inflorescences umbellate, rarely flower solitary; involucres large and broad. Flowers pedicellate or sessile. Perianth actinomorphic or slightly zygomorphic, salverform or subsalverform; lobes oblong, lanceolate, or linear, straight or curved upward. Stamens inserted at throat of perianth tube; filament suberect to declinate, filiform; anther versatile, linear. Ovary 3-loculed; ovules 2 to many per locule. Style slightly decumbent, slender; stigma capitate, small. Fruit a capsule, subglobose, dehiscing irregularly. Seeds orbicular or angular, large.
Usually rather massive scapose herbs with tunicated bulbs and basal, usually succulent leaves; inflorescence scapose, umbelliform, bearing few to several showy, sessile or subsessile flowers subtended by 2 or more spathaceous bracts; perianth salverform, with a long slender tube and a spreading limb of 6 more or less equal lobes, white, or more or less deeply flushed with red or purple; stamens 6, inserted at the base of the perianth lobes; filaments terete or subterete, slender; anthers versatile; fruit a rather fleshy, asymmetrical capsule, tardily dehiscent.
Bulbous herbs. Leaves radical, rarely biseriate, sessile or subpetiolate. Inflorescences umbellate, many-to 1-flowered, with 2 spathes; scape lateral, solid. Flowers white or pinkish, sometimes with a red keel. Tepals subequal, united at the base into a long and narrow tube. Stamens inserted in the throat; filaments free; anthers dorsifixed. Ovary with 1 to many ovules per cell; style filiform; stigma entire. Fruits indehiscent or irregularly dehiscent, with a fleshy or membranous wall. Seeds globose or somewhat flattened, greenish or greyish.
