Description:

• Deciduous or evergreen bulbous herbs
• Bulb 45-100 mm in diameter with thick fleshy tunics, usually conspicuously 2-ranked, sometimes splitting to form clumps
• Leaves 1-6, mostly 2, present after or during flowering, distichous, erect to prostrate, ligulate to elliptical, often barred with red or dark green, glabrous or pubescent, thick-textured
• Inflorescence a many-flowered, compact or spreading head; scape fleshy, slender to stout, solid, up to 370 mm long, ± compressed, glabrous or pubescent, sometimes spotted with red, reclining in fruit; spathe valves 4-13, spreading and membranous or erect, fleshy and brightly coloured
• Flowers regular, funnel-shaped, spreading and lax or erect and dense, pink, red or white; pedicels shorter or slightly longer than perigone
• Tepals connate into a short cylindric or campanulate tube; segments connivent or spreading, longer than perigone tube
• Stamens erect or spreading, ± equal, arising in perigone throat; filaments filiform, free at base, mostly longer than tepal segments or occasionally half as long; anthers dorsifixed, versatile
• Ovary subglobose; ovules bitegmic, solitary or in a collateral pair in each locule
• Style erect, filiform, as long as stamens; stigma minutely tricuspidate
• Berry ovoid to globose, white, orange or pink when ripe, often translucent and aromatic
• Seeds ovoid, fleshy, 5-10 mm in diameter, wine-red to green or opalescent; embryo green
• x = 8, 9

Nomenclature:

• Haemanthus L.
  • Linnaeus: 325 (1753)
  • Baker: 229 (1896) in part
  • Sölch & Roessler: 9 (1969)
  • Bjørnstad & Friis: 190 (1972) in part
  • Friis & Nordal: 63 (1976)
  • Snijman: 1 (1984)
• Leucodesmis Raf.
  • Rafinesque: 19 (1838).
• Perihema Raf.
  • Rafinesque: 20 (1838).
• Serena Raf.
  • Rafinesque: 20 (1838).
• Melicho Salisb.
  • Salisbury: 130 (1866).
• Diacles Salisb.
  • Salisbury: 130 (1866)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 22, endemic, in all countries and provinces except Botswana; most diverse in Namaqualand (Northern Cape) and the Western Cape