Description:

• Rhizomatous, caespitose, grass-like, glabrous herbs, usually montane, with fibrous or woody roots
• Leaves tufted, distichous, short or long, subulate to linear, sheathing basally
• Flowers solitary, in a simple raceme, or in a lax, branched panicle, often with 2-4 accessory side branches at nodes; pedicels not articulated, erect, recurved in fruit, 1-4 in axil of each bract, developing successively
• Perianth spirally twisted when faded, tardily deciduous, breaking off below; segments fused basally into a short tube, blue or white with a blue stripe
• Stamens smooth or scabridulous, arising from base of perianth tube; anthers basifixed
• Ovary with 2 ovules per locule, collateral, one projected upwards and the other downwards; style terete; stigma apical, minute
• Fruit a globose, tripartite loculicidal capsule
• Seeds bean-shaped, verrucose; strophiole discoid, white
• x = 7

Nomenclature:

• Caesia R.Br.
  • Brown: 277 (1810)
  • Baker: 400 (1897)
  • Bentham & Hooker: 793 (1883) as Nanolirion Benth.
  • Phillips: 184 (1951)
  • Obermeyer: 122 (1973)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 12; 9 in Australia, 1 in Madagascar; 2 in southern Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 2, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape