Description :

• Perennial, glabrous or pubescent, bulbous herbs, often forming clumps
• Bulb globose, above or below ground; bulb scales imbricate or outer covering inner, usually with an oblong, hard, woody caudex and fibrous neck; roots many, often hard and thick
• Leaves few to many; contemporary with flowers; usually erect; linear to ovate-acuminate; folded and clasping at base; margin smooth; soft, or sclerotic and closely costate; usually uniformly green
• Inflorescence a terminal raceme of many, small flowers, rarely branched; peduncle erect; bracts small, filiform, decurrent, each often with a small lateral bracteole
• Flowers usually blue, occasionally white tinged pinkish mauve or with a greenish mark at tepal apex; pedicels spreading, short or long, sometimes paired
• Tepals free, spreading or strongly recurved, narrowly ovate, persistent
• Stamens 6; filaments fused to base of tepals, fused at base, spreading, flattened; anthers versatile, introrse
• Ovary globose to oblong; ovules several to many; style filiform; stigma apical
• Fruit a membranous capsule, dehiscing loculicidally
• Seeds rounded, obtusely angled, black, verrucose
• x = 4, 7, 9 (5) (aneuploids, high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Scilla L.
  • Linnaeus: 308 (1753)
  • Baker: 478 (1897) in part
  • Jessop: 233 (1970)
  • Sölch et al.: 66 (1970) in part
  • Stedje: 10 (1996)
  • Stedje: 11 (1998)
• Schizocarphus Van der Merwe
  • Van der Merwe: t. 904 (1943)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 40, Africa, Europe, Asia
• Southern Africa : Species ± 6, widespread, all countries and provinces
  • Found in grassland, stream banks, cliffs and rocky slopes

Additional Notes:

• Cultivated ornamental, used medicinally