Description :

• Small, delicate, perennial, usually saprophytic, herbs
• Leaves basal or reduced to scales
• Flowers bisexual, regular, solitary, or in a bifurcate cyme
• Perianth corolla-like, usually 6-lobed, fused at base into a 3-winged tube; inner lobes smaller than outer or sometimes 0
• Stamens 3-6, arising from perianth tube, sessile or subsessile; anther with 2 widely separated thecae; connective dilated
• Ovary inferior, 3-locular, with axile placentas; ovules many, minute; style shortly 3-lobed
• Fruit a ± 3-winged capsule, usually crowned with dry perianth, opening by longitudinal slits
• Seeds minute
• x = 6 (1 report)

Nomenclature:

• Burmanniaceae
  • Wright: 2 (1912)
  • Hutchinson: 841 (1973)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Genera ± 15, species 125, ± cosmopolitan in tropics and subtropics
• Southern Africa : Genus 1, species 1

References:

• HUTCHINSON, J. 1973. Families of flowering plants , edn 3. Clarendon Press, Oxford
• WRIGHT, C.H. 1912. Burmanniaceae . Flora capensis 5, 3

Resources:

• Burmanniaceae genus: Burmannia