Description:

• Suffrutices or scramblers with perennial or annual stems from a compact woody base
• Rhizome sympodial, often covered by persistent erect cataphylls; roots many, fibrous or often tuberous
• Leaves much reduced, bract-like, with a spinous or soft spur
• Cladodes (phylloclades) solitary or fascicled, persistent or deciduous, green, terete or angled to flat, linear to ovate, apex mucronate, in some species forming a basal disc
• Spines usually present and in some species cauline or foliar in origin
• Flowers bisexual, regular, hypogynous, inconspicuous, solitary, fascicled or racemose; peduncles or pedicels terete or grooved or reduced to a disc or none, articulated once or twice; bracts minute or larger and concave
• Tepals 3 + 3, similar, free and spreading or fused basally
• Stamens 3 + 3; filaments free, arising from base of tepals; anthers bilocular, versatile, introrse, dorsifixed
• Ovary superior, 3-locular with 2-12 axile ovules per locule; style usually short; stigma capitate, 3-lobed or with 3 branches
• Fruit usually a globose or ovoid berry, sometimes a nutlet, tepals often persisting below
• Seeds 1-several, globose, black
• x = 10

Nomenclature:

• Asparagaceae
  • Jussieu: 40 (1789)
  • Dahlgren et al.: 141 (1985)
  • Obermeyer & Immelman: 11 (1992)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genus 1, species ± 120; Africa, Asia, Europe; introduced in Australia
• Southern Africa: Genus 1, species 81

References:

• 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 secundum ordines naturales disposita. Herissant & Barrois. Paris
• OBERMEYER, A.A. & IMMELMAN, K.L. 1992. Asparagaceae. Flora of southern Africa 5,3

Resources:

• Asparagaceae genus: Asparagus