Description:

• Delicate bulbous herbs
• Bulb 5-15 mm in diameter with a thin fibrous covering; tunics showing extensible threads when torn
• Leaves 4-6, distichous, but appearing rosulate, present or rarely absent during flowering, filiform, glabrous
• Inflorescence 1-5-flowered, in an open cluster; up to 65 mm in diameter; scape slender, solid, 25-210 mm long, spirally twisted basally, persisting after seed dispersal; spathe valves 2, narrowly lanceolate, membranous
• Flowers regular, funnel-shaped, white, sometimes pinkish, with or without a green throat; pedicels ascending, filiform, usually longer than perigone
• Tepals connate basally into a funnel-shaped tube; segments slightly spreading, longer than perigone tube
• Stamens decurrent, shortly exserted from perigone tube, equal; inner whorl basally adnate to style for ± 1 mm; anthers subcentrifixed; pollen bisulculate with spinulose exine
• Ovary subglobose; ovules 1-6 per locule, unitegmic; style erect, shortly exserted from perigone tube, stout basally; stigma trifid
• Capsule subglobose, loculicidal, papery
• Seeds fleshy, ovoid, ± 4 mm in diameter, green; testa stomatose; integument and embryo green
• x = 10

Nomenclature:

• Carpolyza Salisb.
  • Salisbury: t. 63 (1807)
  • Baker: 192 (1896)
  • Leighton: 213 (1950)
  • Müller-Doblies: 20 (1985)
  • Snijman: 143 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Monotypic: Carpolyza spiralis (L'Hér.) Salisb., the Western Cape endemic which occurs in seasonally moist sites