Description :

• Small, mostly glabrous geophytes
• Corm annual, covered with reticulate to pectinate fibrous tunics, or twisted hard roots, rarely smooth; old corms discoid, persisting near or at base of new corm; roots many, thin or sometimes contractile, arising from base of new corm
• Leaves 1-12, tristichous, developing before flowering, ovate to linear, V-shaped, channelled or terete in cross section, glabrous or occasionally ciliate with uniseriate hairs, surrounded basally by membranous tubular sheaths
• Inflorescence cymose, 1-6-flowered, glabrous; scape exserted from leaf sheaths; bracts 1 or 2, subtending each flower, foliaceous to linear or vestigial
• Flowers stellate, orange, yellow or white, tinged with red or green on lower surface, occasionally with a dark centre; pedicels usually long, erect or deflexed in fruit
• Tepals 6(4), free to base or rarely arising from a short solid neck, narrowly ovate, patent, persistent and connivent during ripening of fruit
• Stamens 6(2 or 4), 2-seriate, exserted; filaments short; anthers linear, basifixed, latrorse
• Ovary cylindrical to trigonous, 3-locular or rarely unilocular; ovules many, axile; style short, columnar; stigmas 3, free or connate, papillate on inner surface and margins
• Capsule clavate to turbinate, circumscissile or less commonly septicidal
• Seeds subglobose or J-shaped, black and shiny, minutely tuberculate; raphe and hilum conspicuous

Nomenclature:

• Spiloxene Salisb.
  • Salisbury: 44 (1866)
  • Garside: 267 (1936)
  • Garside: 214 (1950)
• Ianthe Salisb.
  • Salisbury: 44 (1866)
  • Baker: 174 (1896) under Hypoxis L. subgenus Ianthe

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species ± 25, endemic to the winter-rainfall region, usually in seasonally wet flats or rock crevices, Namibia, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape