Description:

• Perennial, usually tufted, herbs, with a short rhizome, tuber, or corm, often with red cell-sap (phenalenones)
• Leaves radical, distichous, linear or ensiform, sheathing at base
• Flowers bisexual, regular or ± irregular, in cymes, racemes or panicles, sometimes subumbellate, rarely solitary, often glandular-pubescent or villous
• Perianth: lobes or segments 6, in 1 or 2 whorls; tube absent to long, straight or curved; persistent
• Stamens 3, opposite inner perianth segments; filaments free; anthers 2-thecous, basifixed or versatile, often sagittate, opening by longitudinal slits
• Ovary superior, inferior, or subinferior, (1, 2)3-locular, with 1-numerous axile ovules; style filiform; stigma apical, small or trifid
• Fruit a loculicidal or septicidal capsule or indehiscent
• Seeds solitary to many in each locule

Nomenclature:

• Haemodoraceae
  • Baker: 1 (1896)
  • Hutchinson: 831 (1973)
  • Simpson: 722 (1990)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera 13, species ± 100; southern Africa, Australia and tropical America
• Southern Africa: Genera 3, species 9

References:

• BAKER, J.G. 1896. Haemodoraceae. Flora capensis: 6
• HUTCHINSON, J. 1973. The families of flowering plants, edn 3. Clarendon Press, Oxford
• SIMPSON, M.G. 1990. Phylogeny and classification of the Haemodoraceae. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden: 77

Resources:

• Key to Haemodoraceae genera

• Haemodoraceae genera: