Description :

• Deciduous bulbous herbs
• Bulb 10-50 mm in diameter; outer tunics parchment- to felt-like, if torn producing extensible fibres
• Leaves 2-6, usually present after flowering, distichous, sometimes spreading laterally into a fan, filiform to lorate or elliptic, erect or appressed to the ground, glabrous or pubescent
• Inflorescence up to 30-flowered, in a compact or hemispherical head, 15-100 mm in diameter; scape flexuose or stiff, rarely spirally twisted, solid, 30-480 mm long, glabrous to shortly pubescent, persisting or abscissing at ground level in fruit; spathe valves 2, narrowly lanceolate, membranous
• Flowers regular, clustered and pendulous or widely spreading, varying from funnel-shaped to stellate, white to pink or rarely lemon-yellow; pedicels as long or distinctly longer than perigone, stiff or lax
• Tepals free to base, plane or rarely crisped
• Stamens erect to spreading, adnate to style at base only or up to the proximal third, sometimes adnate proximally to tepals, equal; filaments separate from each other or fused into a tube for up to half their length, usually thickened at base, sometimes toothed; anthers dorsifixed to subcentrifixed; pollen bisulculate with spinulose exine
• Ovary subglobose, glabrous or rarely minutely pubescent; ovules up to 9 per locule, unitegmic; style erect, either 3-winged or swollen, ranging from conoidal to discoid or ovoid at base, slender distally; stigma trifid
• Capsule small, subglobose, loculicidal, papery
• Seeds fleshy, ovoid, 2-4 mm in diameter, reddish green; testa stomatose; integument and embryo green
• x = 10 (11)

Nomenclature:

• Strumaria Jacq.
  • Jacquin: 49 (1797)
  • Willdenow: 31 (1799)
  • Herbert: 287 (1837)
  • Bentham & Hooker: 728 (1883)
  • Baker: 215 (1896)
  • Sölch & Roessler: 13 (1969)
  • Müller-Doblies: 22 (1985)
  • Snijman: 82 (1994)
• Pugionella Salisb.
  • Salisbury: 128 (1866).
• Hymenetron Salisb.
  • SAlisbury: 128 (1866).
• Stylago Salisb.
  • Salisbury: 127 (1866).
• Gemmaria Salisb.
  • Salisbury: 127 (1866)
  • Müller-Doblies: 29 (1985).
• Bokkeveldia D. & U.Müll.-Doblies
  • Müller-Doblies: 27 (1985).
• Tedingea D. & U.Müll.-Doblies
  • Müller-Doblies: 45 (1985)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species ± 23, endemic, most diverse in the winter-rainfall region in Namibia, Northern Cape and Western Cape, with 2 species in semi-arid regions of the S Free State and Eastern Cape