Description:

• Perennial, bulbous herbs
• Bulb variable in size, outer covering of soft or hard, dry, membranous tunics; occasionally forming a neck, sometimes bulbilliferous
• Leaves 1-many (usually 2); contemporary with flowers or occasionally developing before or after flowering; erect to spreading or ± flat on ground; linear, ovate to oblong; often funnelform or tubular below; margin entire, occasionally undulate; smooth, hairy or pustulate; often maculate and/or with transverse stripes
• Inflorescence a raceme or spike of many flowers, upper flowers vestigial; peduncle cylindrical or sometimes swollen, clavate, sometimes spotted; bracts various, often broad and membranous
• Flowers variously coloured, white, yellow, orange, red, blue, purple or green; usually irregular, erect or pendulous, long and tubular to small and campanulate; pedicels long, short or absent
• Tepals fused near base, lobes spreading or cohering and forming a tube; inner tepals usually much longer than outer tepals; outer tepals usually with a swelling or gibbosity near the apex; persistent
• Stamens 6, in one whorl, arising from base of perianth, included or protruding; filaments filiform; anthers versatile, introrse
• Ovary ovoid; ovules few to many per locule; style long or occasionally short, terete; stigma minutely capitate
• Fruit an ovoid to oblong capsule, trigonous, membranous; dehiscing loculicidally
• Seeds globose, black, variable in size and texture; arillode various, large and swollen or ribbed, grading to small and inconspicuous
• x = 7, 8 (5, 9, 11, 13) (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Lachenalia J.Jacq. ex Murray
  • Murray: 314 (1784)
  • Baker: 421 (1897)
  • Sölch et al.: 53 (1970)
  • Barker: 391 (1978)
  • Barker: 193 (1979)
  • Barker: 423 (1983)
  • Barker: 535 (1984)
  • Barker: 166 (1987)
  • Duncan: 1 (1988)
  • Barker: 630 (1989)
  • Duncan: 1 (1996)
  • Duncan: 7 (1997)
  • Duncan: 40 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species ± 110, Namibia, Free State, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape
  • Largest genus of Hyacinthaceae in the region with several species only known from a single locality
  • Occurs in a wide range of habitats

Additional Notes:

• Cultivated ornamental with many cultivars and hybrids, some of which have been in cultivation for over 200 years