Description :

• Small glabrous, deciduous geophytes
• Corm annual, flat-based, with reticulate fibrous tunics; roots arising from base of new corm, mostly thin, a few thick and contractile
• Leaves 4-8, rosulate, semiterete to broadly linear, membranous and sheathed below, outermost without a lamina
• Inflorescence 1- or 2-flowered; usually solitary in each leaf axil; scape simple, with 2 opposing filiform bracts below each flower
• Flowers regular, white to pale pink; pedicels long or very short
• Tepals connate into a short or long perigone tube; segments spreading, narrowly ovate, shorter or longer than tube
• Stamens 3, arising from perigone throat opposite inner lobes; filaments short; anthers basifixed, latrorse with opposing locules, lobed below and above
• Ovary 3-locular, ovoid, with many axile ovules; style bearing 3 recurved hooks; stigma 3-lobed, lobes long, linear, erect, often cohering
• Fruit indehiscent, ovoid to obconic, crowned with old perigone tube, thin-walled, disintegrating irregularly
• Seeds globose, black, shiny, verrucose

Nomenclature:

• Pauridia Harv.
  • Harvey: 341 (1838)
  • Baker: 172 (1896)
  • Garside: 214 (1950)
  • Geerinck: 81 (1969)
  • Thompson: 621 (1979)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species 2, endemic to the winter-rainfall region, Western Cape