Description:

• Perennial, rarely annual, herbs, subshrubs, succulent rosette plants to small pachycaul trees; often rhizomatous; roots often yellowish inside, sometimes inflated and fusiform or with multi-layered velamen
• Leaves generally dorsiventral, often thick and succulent, sometimes terete, usually spirally set, occasionally distichous; linear or subulate to thickly conical or elliptic, sheathing at base, and in succulent genera often serrate-dentate and apically spiny; veins longitudinal but indistinct when leaves are succulent
• Inflorescences simple or compound racemes or spikes; on terminal peduncle, leafless or with bracteal leaves, unibracteate nodes
• Flowers bisexual, regular to conspicuously irregular, hypogynous; pedicels without articulation (except in Kniphofia)
• Perianth segments 3 + 3, free or nearly free or fused into tube, white, yellow, orange, red, or mauve, never blue-violet
• Stamens 3 + 3, arising at base of ovary; filaments free, linear, rarely provided with hairs; anthers 2-thecous, dorsifixed-epipeltate, introrse, opening longitudinally; microsporogenesis simultaneous
• Ovary superior, 3-locular; placentas axile; ovules 2-many; style 1 with small apical stigma
• Fruit a 3-locular, loculicidal capsule
• Seeds arillate, elongated and ovoid

Classification Notes:

• Aloaceae is sometimes retained as distinct from the Asphodelaceae (Cronquist 1981), from which it differs inconsistently by having succulent leaves, tubular flowers, a basic bimodal chromosome complement of 4 long and 3 short chromosomes and the presence of a parenchymatous cap at the phloem pole

Nomenclature:

• Asphodelaceae
  • Jussieu: 51 (1789)
  • Dahlgren et al.: 179 (1985)
  • Smith & Van Wyk: 557 (1991)
  • Smith & Van Wyk: 130 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera 15, species ± 780, in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, New Zealand
• Southern Africa: Genera 10, species ± 353
  • Anthraquinones found frequently, steroidal saponins absent

References:

• CRONQUIST, A. 1981. An integrated system of classification of flowering plants. Columbia University Press, New York
• DAHLGREN, R.M.T., CLIFFORD, H.T. & YEO, P.F. 1985. The families of the monocotyledons. Springer-Verlag, Berlin
• JUSSIEU, A.L. DE. 1789. Genera plantarum. Herissant & Barrois, Paris
• SMITH, G.F. & VAN WYK, B-E. 1991. Generic relationships in the Alooideae (Asphodelaceae). Taxon 40
• SMITH, G.F. & VAN WYK, B-E. 1998. Asphodelaceae. In K. Kubitzki, The families and genera of vascular plants, Vol. III, Flowering plants, MONOCOTYLEDONS, Lilianae (except Orchidaceae). Springer-Verlag, Berlin

Resources:

• Classification of Asphodelaceae
• Key to Asphodelaceae genera

• Asphodelaceae genera: