Description :

• Deciduous perennials
• Rootstock an asymmetric, turbinate or compressed corm, with a circular to crescent-shaped basal ridge from which roots emerge, basal in origin, tunics woody to papery
• Stem short, subterranean, often branched, sometimes sheathed below by a fibrous neck
• Leaves few to several, lower 2 or 3 cataphylls; foliage leaves bifacial, without a definite midrib, few to 1, blade linear, sometimes lanceolate, channelled to flat, sometimes terete
• Inflorescence composed of solitary flowers terminal on short peduncles; bracts largely membranous, green above ground with membranous margins, margins united below, inner two-keeled, the keels green above the ground, usually notched apically
• Flowers actinomorphic, hypocrateriform, shades of purple to pink, rarely white; perianth tube cylindric, elongate
• Tepals equal or subequal, spreading
• Stamens : filaments arising at mouth of tube; anthers erect or ascending; pollen inaperturate, exine perforate
• Ovary subterranean
• Style filiform, branches short, undivided, or apices shortly lacerate
• Capsules usually clavate to turbinate with a narrow sterile tubular base, hygrochastic and 6-valved, rarely ellipsoid, xerochastic and 3-valved
• Seeds globose to weakly angled, flattened at chalazal end, rugulose, matte, surface laevigate
• x = 6 (11)

Classification Notes:

• Easily confused with Romulea , Syringodea is distinctive in Ixioideae in its channelled, bifacial leaves and spherical, inaperturate pollen, conditions shared only with Crocus
• In the woody corm tunics and presence of a basal ridge in some species it is similar to Romulea , which differs in its partly aerial stem, divided style branches, centric, four-grooved leaves, smooth seeds, aperturate pollen and basic chromosome number
• Differences between Syringodea and Crocus , a genus of some 80 species, are more difficult to determine because of the variability in seed and flower characters, notably in the divided or multifid style branches
• However, at least in its elaborately keeled leaves Crocus is distinct

Nomenclature:

• Syringodea Hook.f.
  • Hooker: t. 6072 (1873)
  • De Vos: 201 (1974)
  • De Vos: 1 (1983)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species 8, mostly southern and western Karoo (Northern and Western Cape), mainly in clay soils in karroid scrub