Description:

• Deciduous bulbous herbs
• Bulb sometimes dividing into clusters, often with a conspicuous basal sheath surrounding foliage leaves
• Leaves few to several, frequently spiralled, often pubescent, mostly absent at flowering, often contemporary with fruit; hairs simple or medifixed
• Inflorescence 1-flowered; scape reduced, included in bulb neck; spathe membranous, sheathing
• Flower regular or weakly irregular by deflection of style, often several appearing from a cluster of bulbs, pink to white, fugacious; pedicel reduced
• Tepals connate into a long, slender, fleshy, cylindric tube; segments shorter than tube, spreading
• Stamens 6, 12, 18 or more, uniseriate, arising in perigone throat; filaments short, free or fused at base; sometimes bearing 2-5 anthers; anthers linear, basifixed, rolled backwards with age
• Ovary enclosed in spathe and bulb-neck; ovules many per locule; style elongate, filiform, erect or laterally deflexed; stigma capitate
• Fruit indehiscent, clavate to cylindric, ± succulent, yellowish to white, often spotted with red, aromatic and edible, rarely thin-walled, disintegrating irregularly
• Seeds subglobose, firm, cream-coloured to reddish, small and many or large and few; embryo green
• x = 6

Nomenclature:

• Gethyllis L.
  • Linnaeus: 442 (1753)
  • Baker: 193 (1896)
  • Sölch & Roessler: 8 (1969)
  • Burtt: 87 (1970)
  • Müller-Doblies: 465 (1986)
• Klingia Schonland
  • Schonland: 178 (1919)
  • Phillips: 203 (1951)
  • Wilsenach: 60 (1966)
  • Obermeyer: 136 (1980)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species ± 32, semi-arid areas, Namibia, North-West, Free State, Northern Cape, Western Cape, and Eastern Cape; concentrated in Namaqualand (Northern Cape)