Description :

• Perennial, usually deciduous, solitary or gregarious, bulbous herbs
• Bulb usually below ground, occasionally poorly developed in wet habitats, scales sometimes extended into a neck; bulbilliferous
• Leaves 1-many; developing before flowering or contemporary with flowers; erect or spreading; rosulate or in two ranks; filiform to oblong; usually acute to acuminate; margin smooth, ciliate, fimbriate or muricate; glabrous or hairy; a few species surrounded basally by tubular cataphylls
• Inflorescence a raceme of many to few flowers, rarely a corymb; peduncle erect, curved or with knee-like bend; bracts large to small, various, persistent, often prominent
• Flowers white, green, yellow, orange, red or buff, with or without a green or dark central, dorsal stripe; large and showy to small; scented or not; pedicels short to long
• Tepals free or rarely fused at base, in two subequal whorls; lobes cucullate with minute stipitate glands, ovate to oblong, inner lobes slightly larger, spreading at least at anthesis
• Stamens 6, in two whorls, usually subequal, arising from base of perianth; filaments free, filiform to ovate-acuminate, or with variously shaped lateral expansions; anthers versatile, introrse
• Ovary sessile or stipitate, ovoid or globose; ovules few to many; style absent or terete, erect or deflexed; stigma small, 3-lobed to large, globose and glandular-stipitate, apical
• Fruit a globose to deeply 3-angled and prominently ribbed capsule, transparent or leathery
• Seeds variously shaped, minute to large and discoid, black, shiny, smooth, papillate or with various ridges or protrusions
• x = 4, 6, 7 (aneuploids, high polyploidy)

Classification Notes:

• The work by Müller-Doblies & Müller-Doblies (1996) has not yet been incorporated by South African herbaria
• In this work they describe 40 new species and reinstate another 26 species

Nomenclature:

• Ornithogalum L.
  • Linnaeus 306 (1753)
  • Baker: 494 (1897)
  • Leighton: 83 (1944a)
  • Sölch et al.: 55 (1970)
  • Obermeyer: 323 (1976)
  • Müller-Doblies & Müller-Doblies: 361 (1996)
• Elsiea F.M.Leight.
  • Leighton: 55 (1944b)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 200, Africa, Europe and W Asia
• Southern Africa : Species ± 70, all countries and provinces, especially in S Western Cape
  • Habitat varies from dry, karroid areas to marshes, riverbanks and alpine localities

Additional Notes:

• Several species are known to be extremely poisonous
• Used as a traditional, protective charm
• Well known by its vernacular names Chinkerinchees, Tjienks or Tjienkerintjies
• Several species have long been important in the horticultural trade