Description:

• Perennial, deciduous, small to large bulbous herbs, sometimes forming clumps
• Bulb ovoid to globose, scales loose, imbricate or occasionally outer enveloping inner, usually reddish; roots firm, often swollen and branched
• Leaves 1-15, usually developing after flowering; terete, linear to lorate; glabrous or hairy; margin entire or crisped
• Inflorescence a cylindrical or subcapitate raceme, often tall, usually dense and many-flowered; peduncle erect, cylindrical; bracts membranous, short or long, often protruding far beyond upper buds, persistent, at least lower ones spurred
• Flowers white, pink, yellowish to greenish brown or purple, often tinged silver or bronze, usually with darker keels; facing sideways or pendulous
• Tepals fused below, forming a tube near base; lobes usually reflexed, usually longer than tube; deciduous, cohering above when withered, circumscissile below
• Stamens 6, arising from base of perianth tube; filaments erect and somewhat connivent or spreading, terete, smooth or rough; anthers versatile, opening by longitudinal slits
• Ovary ovoid, obtuse; ovules many; style terete, ultimately exserted; stigma small, apical
• Fruit an oblong-globose to globose capsule, triangular; dehiscing loculicidally
• Seeds flat, ovate, dark, shiny
• x = 10 (9) (polyploidy)

Classification Notes:

• Drimia is viewed in its strict sense and does not include genera such as Urginea, Thuranthos and Tenicroa (see Jessop 1976) or Urginea, Rhadamanthus, Tenicroa, Schizobasis and Litanthus (see Goldblatt & Manning 2000)

Nomenclature:

• Drimia Jacq.
  • Jacquin: 38 (1796)
  • Willdenow: 165 (1799)
  • Baker: 436 (1897)
  • Jessop: 269 (1977) in part
  • Deb & Dasgupta: 819 (1982)
  • Hutchings et al.: 40 (1996)
  • Stedje: 15 (1996) in part
  • Goldblatt & Manning 97 (2000)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species ± 13, Northern Province, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Western and Eastern Cape
  • Varied habitat, but most frequent in open grassland, sometimes amongst rocks, occasionally in marshy ground

Additional Notes:

• Used in traditional medicine and protective charm mixes