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Plants slender to robust, all parts glabrous, flowering with the leaves. Leaves lanceolate to filiform, erect. Scapes 1-3 per plant. Inflorescence a raceme with 2-300 flowers; pedicels erect or spreading at anthesis, erect in fruit; bracts lanceolate to ovate-acuminate, with filiform apex, never spurred. Perianth-segments free, spreading, white or white with a dorsal green band, apex cucullate with glands. Filaments free, white and flattened. Ovary sessile or with a short carpophore, 3-locular, with many ovules per locule; style slender and as long as the ovary. Capsules subglobose. Seeds black, irregularly flattened, outline sub-to semicircular.
Herbs with tunicated bulbs. Roots fibrous. Leaves basal, usually linear, annual. Inflorescence an erect, corymbose or elongate raceme, bracteate. Flowers bisexual, regular, pedicellate. Perianth segments 6, usually free, subequal, spreading, with or without a keel. Stamens 6; filaments simple or with basal appendages; anthers versatile, dorsifixed, dehiscing by slits, introrse. Ovary superior, trilocular; ovules 2 to many per locule; placentation axile; style absent to elongate; stigma capitate or lobed. Fruit a loculicidal capsule. Seeds numerous, globose, ovoid, angled or flattened, black.
Bulbous, clump-forming perennials. Bulb tunicate, ± globose. Leaves all basal, usually linear, glabrous or hairy. Flowers in erect terminal corymbose racemes; segments free or ± connate at base, spreading, usually white with green median stripe externally; lower pedicels elongating; bract single, scarious. Capsule loculicidal. Seeds many, subglobose, black. Spp. c. 150, of Europe, W. Asia, tropical and S. Africa, and S. America (Chile). Adventive sp. 1.
Fls perfect; tep 6, distinct; stamens 6, free from the perianth; filaments broad and flat, at least at base, the anthers oblong, versatile; ovary superior; style and stigma trigonous; capsule loculicidal, obtusely trigonous, with ± numerous seeds in each locule; perennial herbs from a poisonous, coated bulb, with linear basal lvs, an erect or ascending scape, and a bracteate raceme of white fls. 150, temp. Old World.
