Description :

• Deciduous perennials
• Rootstock a globose, bell-shaped or asymmetric corm, often with a circular to crescent-shaped basal ridge from which roots emerge, basal in origin, tunics woody to cartilaginous or firm-papery, rarely fibrous
• Stem short, subterranean or aerial, occasionally hairy, usually branched, sometimes below ground, often coiled in fruit
• Leaves few to several, lower 2 or 3 cataphylls; foliage leaves 2-several, unifacial, usually with a definite midrib, all basal or some cauline, ± filiform or cylindric, straight or twisted, occasionally hairy on margins, usually midrib and margins thickened, sometimes winged, blade thus oval to terete in transverse section with 2 sinuses on each surface between margins and midrib, occasionally up to 8-grooved or nearly plane with lightly thickened margins and midrib, rarely bifacial and channelled
• Inflorescence composed of solitary flowers terminal on peduncles; bracts green, margins of outer sometimes and of inner always membranous to scarious and pale or ferrugineous, occasionally inner bract entirely dry, rarely hairy, inner usually acute and undivided apically
• Flowers actinomorphic, mostly campanulate, cup deep or shallow, sometimes hypocrateriform, variously coloured, often discolorous and paler in centre, sometimes with darker markings; perianth tube usually short and funnel-shaped, sometimes elongate and cylindric
• Tepals equal or subequal, usually ascending below and spreading above
• Stamens : filaments erect, ± contiguous, sometimes united, frequently somewhat swollen and hairy below; anthers diverging or contiguous; pollen monosulcate, operculate, exine perforate
• Style filiform, exserted from tube, enclosed in perianth, branches short, usually divided for half their length, rarely multifid
• Capsules oblong to subglobose
• Seeds globose or lightly angled, flattened at chalazal end, smooth, matte, surface laevigate or areolate
• x = 14 or 13 (12, 11, 10, 9) (aneuploid)

Classification Notes:

• The woody corm tunics with the roots arising from a basal ridge suggest a common ancestry with Geissorhiza and Hesperantha , but Romulea is more specialised than these genera in its partly underground stem and inflorescence of single-flowered peduncles
• Romulea is probably close to the line that gave rise to Syringodea and Crocus in which the stem is entirely underground at anthesis, the perianth tube elongate and the leaves secondarily bifacial

Nomenclature:

• Romulea Maratti
  • Maratti: 13, t. 1 (1774) name conserved
  • De Vos: 49 (1972)
  • De Vos: 10 (1983)
• Trichonema Ker Gawl.
  • Ker Gawler: t. 575 (1802)
• Spatalanthus Sweet
  • Sweet: t. 300 (1829)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 88, extending through eastern southern Africa to Europe and the Middle East, with a secondary centre in the western Mediterranean and Canary Islands
• Southern Africa : Species ± 77, centred in the winter-rainfall area

Additional Notes:

• The flowers close at night and in cold weather and are mostly pollinated by bees foraging for pollen
• The species with brightly coloured flowers are pollinated by monkey beetles (Scarabaeidae), and the long-tubed species by long-proboscid flies (Bombyliidae and Nemestrinidae)