Description :

• Perennial, deciduous, bulbous herbs
• Bulb subglobose to globose, scales loose, pink or reddish
• Leaves 1-many; usually present at flowering; terete, surrounded at base by membranous, striate sheaths with raised, transverse, purple or brown ridges
• Inflorescence a raceme of few to many flowers; bracts membranous, at least lower ones conspicuously spurred
• Flowers usually white with dark reddish brown or green keels, in one species purplish pink with a green and white eye at tepal base; sweetly scented
• Tepals free, usually spreading
• Stamens 6; filaments closely surrounding ovary; anthers basifixed, opening by longitudinal slits
• Ovary oblong-globose; ovules several per locule; style terete, declinate, exserted; stigma globose, papillate
• Fruit an ovoid or ellipsoid capsule; valves with thickened margins
• Seeds oval, flat, black

Classification Notes:

• Closely related to Drimia and Urginea , but can be separated by the distinctive sheaths around the leaves; included in Drimia by Jessop (1977)

Nomenclature:

• Tenicroa Raf.
  • Rafinesque: 52, 60 (1837; as '1836')
  • Obermeyer: 577 (1981)
  • Bond & Goldblatt: 56 (1984)
  • Snijman: 284 (1985)
• Sypharissa Salisb.
  • Salisbury: 38 (1866)
  • Obermeyer: 111 (1980)
• Drimia in sense of Jessop
  • Jessop: 269 (1977) in part

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species 5, Namibia, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape
  • Occurs in sandy habitats or humus-rich rock crevices