Description:

• Perennial, solitary or gregarious, bulbous herbs
• Bulb globose to ovoid, usually large, outer tunics usually dark and membranous; roots many
• Leaves several to many, contemporary with flowers; lorate to obovate; base channelled; smooth, shiny; green, occasionally with purple spots and/or stripes, occasionally suffused with purple
• Inflorescence a raceme of many flowers, topped with a coma of green, leafy, sterile bracts (rarely fertile); peduncle cylindrical or club-shaped; fertile bracts smaller than coma bracts
• Flowers white, cream, greenish or wine-red, sometimes pungently scented; pedicels short to long
• Tepals fused at base; lobes spreading, oblong or oblanceolate-oblong, persistent
• Stamens 6, arising near base of perianth; filaments fused below to form a shallow cup, deltoid; anthers versatile, introrse
• Ovary rounded to obovoid, nectariferous above; ovules many in each locule; style tapering; stigma small, apical
• Fruit a 3-angled capsule, inflated and membranous or dry, hard and compact
• Seeds globose or ovoid, black, brown or hard
• x = 10 (aneuploids, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Eucomis L'Hér.
  • L'Héritier: 17 , t. 18 (1789)
  • Baker: 475 (1897)
  • Reyneke (1972)
  • Pooley: 98, 512 (1998)
  • D. Govender pers. com.

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 11, South Africa to Zimbabwe and Malawi
• Southern Africa: Species ± 10, Botswana, Northern Province, North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape, widespread but absent from drier areas
  • Found in grassland, forest, swamps and along river banks, from coast to mountainous areas of the interior

Additional Notes:

• Used in traditional medicine
• Unusual and beautiful garden plants
• The common name 'pineapple lily' is derived from the coma-topped raceme, which resembles a pineapple