Description :

• Rhizomatous geophytes or rarely perennial suffrutices with much-branched stems, adorned with tubular persisting leaf bases, up to 1.8 m tall, glabrous, hairy or glandular-pubescent; roots various, fibrous or spindle-shaped, often swollen and fused, forming a compact tuberous, lobed organ, with attenuated ends
• Leaves thickly leathery to somewhat succulent, rosulate, rarely distichous, or cauline and alternate, variously shaped, often terete, with a basal tubular sheath; shoots and/or leaf bases often enveloped by tubular membranous squamae
• Inflorescence an axillary, simple or branched raceme, often with serial buds; scape usually naked; one bract per flower; pedicels not articulated, mobile
• Flowers erect or pendulous; opening in afternoon, closing at night
• Perianth stellate or recurved, deciduous, cohering apically when wilted, circumscissile below, leaving a shallow cup below capsule; usually white, rarely yellow, pink or mauve, dark-keeled, often bi-maculate below
• Stamens : filaments retrorsely scabrid
• Ovary with 2-16 ovules in each locule
• Capsule rounded or sometimes stipitate through abortion of lower ovules
• Seeds angled, brown or grey, with some scattered glands
• x = 7

Nomenclature:

• Trachyandra Kunth
  • Kunth: 573 (1843)
  • Baker: 378 (1896-1897) under Anthericum
  • Obermeyer: 711 (1962)
  • Sölch et al.: 68 (1970)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 50, Africa
• Southern Africa : Species 49, widespread in all countries and provinces, mainly restricted to winter-rainfall area of Western Cape